Snippet from my reply to a similar sibling comment:

Sorry, I'm not meaning to say that people aren't getting paid enough. My phrasing choice of "actual problem" was poor. I'll leave it up so this thread makes sense.

My intended point was: if we want to understand whether peoples' lives are sustainable with their present wages in NYC, we should be measuring their actual wages, which is inclusive of this grey economy, unlike the reported data source.

The amount of "tax fraud" required to impact the figure is less than one might imagine, because the "living wage" standard is quite low.