The median income rose to $56,516 in 2015, from $53,718 in 2014, said David Waddington, chief of the bureau’s Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division.
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That positive news was partnered with a 5.2 percent increase in median household income, which, according to the Bureau, is “the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession”. And it found that these households saw their incomes drop by 2 percent between 2014 and 2015: “from $45,534 to $44,657”.
Steady job growth and the biggest earnings boost in a decade helped sharply lower the poverty level in the United States previous year and finally provided relief to the long-running problem of stagnant wages. While the poverty rate has improved, it’s still higher than it was in 2000. Median household income figures actually peaked in the late 1990s, after several years of rapid economic expansion. But married couple families with two or more children within the 6-to-17 age range had a median income of $99,027.
“Poverty is higher than it was in 1999, family incomes are lower than what they were in 1999, inequality is a lot higher than it was in 1999”. It took six years to reach that point, a trend that likely has contributed to insurgent candidacies by GOP nominee Donald Trump and Sen.
Despite the steady job growth produced by the USA economy in recent months, some U.S. policymakers have sounded a note of caution, citing slack in the labour markets and saying labour force participation remains 1-1.5 percentage points below the levels recorded before the global financial crisis of 2007-2008.
The proportion of Americans in poverty also fell sharply previous year, as 2.4 million more people found full-time, year-round jobs. That’s a drop of 1.2 percentage points from 2014, the largest decline in poverty since 1999. Similarly, the poverty rate dropped to 13 percent in metropolitan statistical areas – down from 14.5 percent in 2014 – but the poverty rate outside of metro areas remained nearly unchanged at 16.7 percent.
The income growth among poorer Americans has been attributed to a rise in minimum wages, increased employment and more competition for low-wage jobs, Reuters reports.
California doesn’t just lead the nation in the sheer number of people who are now insured – which would be predictable, given that California has by far the state’s most residents.
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It finally happened. Americans got a raise in 2015.
The median is still 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, before the recession.
The Census Bureau’s annual report on income and poverty in the United States, released this week, did not focus on that fact.
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The share of people in the United States uninsured for the entire year was 9.1 percent, or 29 million people.
