Working in a Profession, you are making Cr 250 X Effect, per month.
So, if you are just starting out, Profession-0, you'd need to roll 2D for 9+ to get Cr 250, 10+ for Cr 500, 11+ for Cr 750, and 12+ for Cr 1,000.
Seems to me like this is menial Gig work, or similar, just starting out in your life odd jobs, part-time jobs, or piecework (as in a journalist writing short stories, or articles for e-magazines).
Essentially, this is the Working Poor, considering P. 92 of the Table clearly shows Standard of living Social level 5, Low at 1,000 Credits per month. But at that cost, your food and meals are covered.
So at Profession-0, You cannot afford an apartment, and meals. Such things have a combined cost of Cr 400 for the month, even at Soc 2.
Considering page 92 suggests you could get a fast food meal for Cr 2-3, And In our modern-day fast food is conveying 1600-1800 calories, this would seem to be a starvation diet, given you need 1,600-2,400, and 2,000-3,000 calories a day on average.
Call it 3.3 Credits a day, 30 days a month = ~100 Credits for Starvation level diet. This means then that the most Dive level Ghetto apartment might cost 200 Credits or a basic starter one bedroom studio is 300 Credits a month, which matches the "Cheap Hotel" in paragraph 1 on page 92.
I am assuming here for both, you'd get fresh water supply, and some kind of hot water heater, microwave or stove, trash removal once a week, A TV or internet or what passes for same on a moderate to High TL world, at least a beer fridge, and some cheap put-it-together-yourself Particle board / chipboard / low density fiberboard (LDF) furniture.
Now my take on this is that you could for example, have a Player Character work TWO jobs to TRY to make ends meet. But really, you'd need the support of Parents, or some other setup, 2 or three characters you trust sharing a tiny apartment, just to get going, unless you joined the Military or went to College, or started a career with the Regular rules.
The Text in MgT2, says "...there are a huge range of potential specialties for this skill, one for every possible profession in the universe."
Someone with Profession 4, could relatively reliably make around 750 Credits a month, and in rare cases, up to 2,000 Credits per month.
The most basic Starship Crew positions are Gunner, and Marine, paid at 1,000 Credits per Month. A Steward is getting 2,000 Credits a month.
In my setting, Cr 1 = USD $2 This matches pretty closely with what someone in the US Coast Guard in making as a Junior Enlisted, Rank E-1, at age 18, USD $2,000 a month, for various Base pay, Subsistence, Basis Allotment for Quarters, and Variable Housing AAllownace. the real process is complicated, beyond what I intend here, just saying it is in the ballpark.
Profession-1 would need to roll an 8+ to get Cr 250 or more.
The Campaign that I run, is basically multiple worlds of Corporate Worker Drone poor, struggling at temp jobs. Like Serving on a ship, if you get a job, you get a basic Apartment, and food at the Jobsite cafeteria. You can't afford to quit once you get a decent job, or you will essentially starve. Ther money you get from your profession earnings is money to burn or bonuses on top of everything else. Roughly 50% of the time, you have nothing left at the end of the month.
Legions of homeless, and criminality is pretty high, since law levels on frontier worlds are generally low.
Traveller jobs on Free Traders, there are dozens of applicants, and only 1 or 2 get picked.
Those people that are Travellers are a rare breed, flying among the stars, making piles of money, that the other 95% can only dream of.
