Economy
Household Income Rose Over 5% in 2015, Nearing Pre-Recession Levels
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The U.S. Census has now released much data on household income, poverty, health insurance and other key data for 2015 versus 2014. That data may still be somewhat incomplete, with so many tax returns still outstanding before the October 15 deadline. Still, the good news here is that household income posted a sharp rise in 2015.
Tuesday’s data dump from the Census included one very key point that economists, investors, consumers and even members of the Federal Reserve should cheer. Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516. In real terms, this represented a 5.2% gain from the $53,718 median household income of $53,718 from 2014.
Another positive is that this marked the first real annual increase in median household income since 2007.
Other data was shown as well:
This does represent good news. Still, it is not back to before the recession. The Census report said:
Real median household income in 2015 was 1.6 percent lower than in 2007, the year before the most recent recession, and 2.4 percent lower than the median household income peak that occurred in 1999. The difference between the 1.6 percent change and the 2.4 percent change was not statistically significant.
The full Census report data show breakdowns by race, sex, inequality, poverty and more.
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