Stagnation

At Economix, David Leonhardt writes:

The typical American household made less money last year than the typical household made a full decade ago.

To me, that’s the big news from the Census Bureau’s annual report on income, poverty and health insurance, which was released this morning. Median household fell to $50,303 last year, from $52,163 in 2007. In 1998, median income was $51,295. All these numbers are adjusted for inflation.

In the four decades that the Census Bureau has been tracking household income, there has never before been a full decade in which median income failed to rise. (The previous record was seven years, ending in 1985.) Other Census data suggest that it also never happened between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. So it doesn’t seem to have happened since at least the 1930s.

Oh, and the poverty rate is up, too. Mark Thoma points us to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorties, which produced this chart: And that's as of 2008. Next year's report likely won't be pretty. See also Ezra Klein, Catherine Rampell.