WASHINGTON (AP) – The income for the typical American household hardly rose last year and essentially corresponded to the Peak 2019, the Census Bureau said Tuesday, as a stubborn high inflation -offset wage profit.
The report also showed that households with the highest earn a healthy inflation-corrected income, while households with middle and lower income saw little profit.
The average family income, adapted for inflation, in 2024 was $ 83,730, said the Census Bureau, an increase of 1.3% compared to the level of $ 82,690 of the previous year. The Median is the center between households with the highest and lowest income and helps the impact of very high and very low incomes that averages can be soften racks.
The figures help illustrate why many Americans have been dissatisfied with the economy since the pandemic, even because unemployment has been historically low: average household incomes are essentially unchanged compared to five years earlier, the report showed. The median family income was $ 83,260 in 2019, according to the report, and the slightly higher figure for 2024 falls within the error margin and therefore does not reflect little change from five years earlier, said Census functionaries.
That is a sharp contrast to the previous five -year period, from 2014 to 2019, when the median family income rose by almost 21%.
“It is not difficult to see why Americans from the middle class are frustrated,” says Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. “In 2025, the frozen job market, rates and Medicaid-deployment will put a pinch in households in the middle and lower income.”
For the richest 10% of households, incomes rose by 4.2% to $ 251,000, while for the poorest one tenth one by 2.2% increase to $ 19,900. A household is defined by Census as a family unit or a person who lives alone or with people who are not family members.
The family income fell three years after 2019, mainly due to the COVID Pandemie and the resulting prize jump, and rose for the first time in four years in 2023.
The worst inflation peak in four decades in 2021 and 2022 sent most Americans on the economy, eroded sharp wage profits that took place when employers desperately sought employees after the pandemic, and contributed to the defeat of vice -president Kamala Harris in the election of last year. Inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, dropped to an annual average of 2.9% in 2024, a decrease in an average of 8% two years earlier.
The results also varied due to the demographic group, where Asian and Spanish households report fixed income gain. The median inflation-corrected income for Asians rose 5.1% to $ 121,700, while for Hispanics it rose by 5.5% to $ 70,950. White incomes hardly increased and were $ 92,530 last year, while black incomes fell by 3.3% to $ 56,020.
Income for women hardly increased, while the male income increased, which extended the gender pay gap for the second consecutive year after two decades of narrowing. Women now earn an average of 80.9% of what men earn, a decrease of 82.7% in 2023.
