The median income in the US is $50,000. The average work week is 34.5 hours (per the OECD), or upwards of 40 according to other sources. $25 per hour is a reasonable baseline for the US average. So it's about four hours of work. The average tax rate is 18%, so it's more like 4.8 hours of work including taxes.
That's the household median. When you combine/compare the data in [1] and [2] that median makes sense when you consider two income households. The individual median is around half that value (fits in the $25,000-27,999 bracket somewhere, assuming a uniform distribution across that range it'd be around $26,500).
