Americans earned $53,700 in 2014 and $56,500 in 2015, an increase of 5.2 percent. To be sure, median incomes remained 1.6 percent below their pre-recession levels, but given employment and wage growth trends, that last bit of ground could well be made up this year.
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The U.S. economy is a remarkably resilient engine of prosperity, as the Census Bureau’s annual snapshot of incomes and poverty showed on Tuesday.
But income of the typical USA home still remained below that of 2007, the year before the most recent recession, when median household income was $57,423. Perhaps for fear of seeming insensitive to the lingering post-recession hurt many households still feel, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has seemed to hesitate to talk about the real recovery that has taken place under the fellow Democrat, President Obama, she is trying to succeed – much less claim credit for it. Nationwide, the poverty rate decreased in 2015, down to 13.5 percent from 14.8 percent the day before. Asian households had the highest median income at $77,166, but saw no significant change over 2014. That’s 43.1 million people in poverty in 2015, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014.
With many more Americans signing up for private insurance through new marketplaces created by Obamacare, the number of people who were uninsured for part or all of previous year came down to 29 million, from 33 million in 2014. The median is still 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, before the recession.
Other measures of inequality changed little, however.
The PPIC study also revealed that the state’s highest level of poverty, 26.1 percent, was to be found in Los Angeles County, home to a huge immigrant population working at low-skill, low-wage jobs but confronting very high housing costs in relation to their modest incomes. The wealthiest Americans, on the other hand, have fully recovered from the recession and are now even a few percentage points ahead.
In 2015, median incomes picked up in all regions of the United States, across all age groups, and for most ethnic and racial groups. Households in the “principle cities of metropolitan areas” saw a 7.3 percent increase over the same time period.
Americans are also likely benefiting from an increase in middle-income jobs. Its traditional measurement pegs California’s poverty rate at 15 percent – roughly in the middle of the pack. Numerous jobs created in the early years of the recovery were in low-paying sectors, such as fast food restaurants and retail.
The Census Bureau also put out a separate report on the supplemental poverty rate which incorporates how government programs, such as Social Security and food stamps, affect poverty.
But according to a report last month from the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, in 2014 and 2015 the growth of middle-income jobs in sectors such as shipping and construction outpaced the gains in lower-paying and higher-paying work. That’s down from 10.4 percent, or 33 million in 2014. This is also the first time real income growth has exceeded 5 percent since the Bureau started reporting income in 1967.
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“The ratio of earnings for women working full-time, full-year to earnings for men working full-time, full-year increased to 80 per cent in 2015, the highest on record”, Mr Furman said.
