The Terrible Facts about the Real Earnings of Men

Jon Economy

The income data from the Census Bureau is here. Men, sit down.
On the surface, the data looks benign, with trends improving. And this is what you will see when you look at the media coverage of the Census Bureau’s Income and Poverty report (PDF) released today:
Median household income, adjusted for inflation (via CPI), rose 3.2% between 2015 and 2016 to $59,039, the second year in a row of annual increases. For ‘family households,’ the median income rose 2.7% to $75,062. For ‘nonfamily households,’ it rose 4.5% to $35,761. The official poverty rate (weighted average threshold for a family of four = $24,563) inched down from last year to 12.7%, about the same as in 2007, before the Financial Crisis made a mess of people’s lives. In total, 40.6 million people live in poverty by this definition. The poverty rate for families fell to 9.8%, from 10.4% a year earlier, affecting 8.1 million families. The survey is based on respondents at 98,000 addresses across the US – so a very large sample. Household income includes the amounts of money that the household received during that year from each of the following sources:
Earnings

This post was published at Wolf Street on Sep 12, 2017.