Why use the median wage nationally, when almost everyone living in NY benefits from higher wages there? Even the jobs which require no skill and no work experience pay $15/hr
Median household income and median wage (or, alternatively, the former and median personal income, which isn't quite the same thing as median wage, but closely related) are not the same things. Of course, this thread has gone from one person mentioning mean wage and salary income to the response discussing median wage as if it were the same to the response to that discussing median household income as if it was the same.
That makes the argument that NYC is unaffordable even stronger.
That seems to be what the Census Bureau has for median household income for New York State for that period; I can't find any Census Bureau report for median wage for NYC, and that number doesn't match any Census Bureau reported income & poverty measure for New York City.