Just in case you’re curious, here is the growth of household income over the past 40 years:
Please note a few things:
- I have used the PCE inflation index in order to keep all the PCE folks happy.
- The income data comes from the Census Bureau. It is market income. It does not include food stamps or Section 8 vouchers or other social welfare payments.
- The growth rate since 2000 has been 0.44 percent per year. This is not “stagnant.” However, it is “sluggish.”
- Thanks to high growth since 2013 (about 4.2 percent per year) households have finally recovered the income they lost in the Great Recession. However, that is flattening out and will most likely return to the ~0.5 percent growth rate of the post-2000 era.
Anyone who wants to call income growth of 0.44 percent anything better than sluggish is welcome to do so. But if you do, your understanding of the English language is different than mine.
