So, most apparentments I can get here with an area of 35 square metres (370 square feet) to 50 square metres (540 square feet) go from 450€ to 650€ a month unless you live in a major city like Vienna or Graz. 35 square metres already is pretty decent, I don't think you would need anything bigger unless you have kids, even living together with a partner 50 square metres is perfectly fine.
So for other monthly expenses, you can get food for a person without eating out for around 80-100€ a month.
Heating is around 120-160€ a month but it varies
Water single person about 30€ a month
Electricity got pretty expensive recently so you could propably pay 80-100€ a month.
Other commodities like internet, streaming services, subscriptions, phone provider should add up to around 100€ a month if we are generous.
Last but not least transport if you can go where you need via public transport wich most people can do you pay around 80€ a month, if you need (want) a car you go with propably 400€ a month for gas insurance.
Insurance in general like for your home, propably also around 100€
So now for pay, we measure pay monthly but you just have to multiply by 14 (yes 14 we have 14 pay periods, you get payed monthly except for one month in summer and around December where you get payed the monthly wage twice except for that the second payment is taxed less)
So anyway if you start working at a company with a finished education in any field, wich pretty much everyone has at around 18 years old you would get around 2000-2200€ per month, wich roughly translates into 1450-1650€ after taxes. That is full time job 38.5h, with free public healthcare, sick leave and mandatory minimum of 5 weeks vacation a year + extra pay if you have to come in holidays, Sundays + extra pay for having to work shifts+ extra pay for potentially dangerous work/hard work (wich is the case for most work)
So let's add up the costs, if we go with the just the normal pay a month not taking 14 pay periods or extra pay into account
600€ rent+100€food+300€ heating/water/electricity+100€ “commodities+400€ transport+100€ insurance=1600€
So with a monthly pay after tax of 1450-1650€ for the average person who just started working, you can see why some might be struggling, especially considering some might only earn 1500€ full time like it's the case in some retail, 1500€ roughly translates to 1200€ after tax.
But for the most part I was very, generous with the monthly payments you gotta make and for most people it's rather an inconvenience because you can't go eat out once a week anymore or go to some event for 100€ twice a month.
Unless you really earn 1100€ working full time you won't be having troubles with you monthly payments, something might break down like your car or washing machine and it will give you financial instability for some time but nothing where you would go without food or where you would get evicted, you really would need to be very careless with your money.
So what I wanted to express, yeah I hope you can see why some people might be struggling here in Europe too, but it is nowhere near as horrible as in the US as far as I can see and it is pretty much unheard of that anyone would work 2 jobs, if you work 40h a week, that's enough for you to live a life here, never saw anyone work 60h because they need to, to survive.