Household Incomes Fall Over 8%

In another sign that the economic recovery under President Obama is not producing gains for average Americans, median household incomes fell 1.1% in August to $50,678, according to a report released Tuesday by Sentier Research. Since the economic recovery started in June 2009, household incomes are down 5.7%, the Sentier data show, and they are down more than 8% since Obama took office.

"Even though we are technically in an economic recovery, real median annual household income is having a difficult time maintaining its present level, much less recovering," said Sentier co-founder and former Census Bureau official Gordon Green.

Earlier this month, the Census Bureau released its annual report showing that the number of people in poverty was nearly 3 million higher in 2011 than in 2009, an increase of 6%. That report also found that average incomes for middle- and lower-income households fell in 2011 after adjusting for inflation. They rose only for the wealthiest 20% of households. Read more >>

Incomes still well below pre-recession levels

Median household incomes, before taxes and adjusted for inflation, have risen 2.2% in the last year through June, according to Sentier Research, a consulting firm founded by Census Bureau researchers. They remain 7.2% below where they were in December 2007 — the start of the recession — and 4.8% below when the recession ended in June 2009, Sentier reported.

The recent improvement was concentrated in late 2011, but the median has slipped slightly this year, in part because of inflation, Sentier partner Gordon Green said. "Inflation is a big player now" in future household budgets, Green said. "Incomes have flattened out, and gas prices are going up again."

Consumers have lost more ground since the recession ended than they did while it was still occurring, the report said, repeating a conclusion Sentier published last year. The damage has been much worse, predictably, in homes where the person listed as the property owner or renter has been unemployed. Their incomes are down 22.6% since June 2009. But even households where the primary earner has been employed continuously also have incomes almost 5% lower than in June 2009. Read more>>

Americans’ Incomes Have Dropped 6.7 Percent During the ‘Recovery’

According to Sentier’s report, the median American household income has actually fallen during the “recovery.” Not only that, but it has fallen even more than it did during the recession. Gordon Green, former chief of the Governments Division at the U.S. Census Bureau and co-author of the report (with fellow Census veteran John Coder), says, “Real income fell by 3.2 percent during [the recession]. And during the recovery it went down by 6.7 percent.” So “income [has] declined twice as much in the recovery as in the recession itself.”

While the real median income of American households dropped 6.7 percent during the first two years of the “recovery,” the incomes of many households dropped even more than that. The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent). And that’s despite the fact that the report’s income tallies include unemployment compensation and monetary public assistance (both state and federal). More...