A Recovery Felt by Few Americans
If you relied on the headlines for an understanding of the economy’s health, “you would be forgiven for thinking these are the best of times,” said Neil Irwin. The unemployment rate is down to an exceptionally low 5.1 percent. The stock market, despite recent turbulence, continues to roar to near all-time highs. Everything’s coming up roses, right? “An important corrective” arrived last week from the Census Bureau, which reported that the median U.S. household had a lower income in 2014, in inflation-adjusted terms, than in 2013. The $53,657 earned at the very middle of the income scale was also 6.5 percent lower than in 2007, and 7.2 per cent below where it was in 1999. In other words, a middle-class family makes substantially less today than it did 15 years ago, and there is “no evidence that is reversing.”
This “depressing data” on our disappearing wages holds true across almost every demographic group sorted by age or race. Stagnant incomes have become a stubborn fact of life in this country, and they—not the jobless rate or the booming financial markets—should be forming the backdrop of the 2016 presidential election. The census numbers are not surprising, given that they highlight a 15-yearold trend. “But they are a timely reminder of what really ails the economy.”
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