VC Chamath Palihapitiya broke down the new Census numbers that are not good for Joe Biden. He said: “US incomes have fallen every year of the Biden Presidency thus far. Median incomes: The median income last year fell to $74,580. 90th percentile fell to $216,000, and the bottom 10th was $17,100.
“Poverty rate – the supplemental poverty measure – based on post-tax income and includes government-transfer payments like stimulus checks – rose to 12.4% . It was the first increase since 2010.
“Income inequality: The Gini index fell to 0.488, narrowing the gap as pay among the highest earners decreased. A Gini coefficient of zero reflects perfect equality, where all income or wealth values are the same, while a Gini coefficient of 1 (or 100%) reflects maximum inequality.”
The White House said: “The Official Poverty Measure (OPM) was essentially unchanged last year, at 11.5 percent. But due in large part to the expiration of key anti-poverty measures, the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM),[1] which accounts for more government benefits, taxes, and expenses than the OPM, rose from 7.8 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent this year.
“The SPM rate for children more than doubled, from 5.2 to 12.4 percent. A significant piece of this rise was the 2021 expiration of highly potent, targeted tax benefits, including the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC). Over five million children were added to the 2022 poverty rolls by this metric, by far the largest increase in SPM poverty on record.
“Real median household income fell 2.3 percent last year. In more recent months, however, the persistence of the strong labor market and the decline in the rate of inflation have to led to rising real wages and incomes.
“The share of Americans without health insurance dropped to 7.9 percent in 2022, down from 8.3 in 2021 and 8.6 percent in 2020.
“Median household income, pre-tax and adjusted for inflation, fell 2.3 percent last year. As noted, this was the outcome of fast nominal growth but even faster inflation.
“These strong nominal gains partly reflected increased employment, hours, and wages in 2022 (which has continued into this year). While the number of total workers in the Census data increased by 1.7 percent last year, the number of full-time, full-year workers increased by 3.4 percent, a sign of labor market participants shifting from part-time or part-year work to full-time.
“In fact, the 65.6 percent of women who worked full time, full year last year represent the largest such share on record, with data back to 1967.
“Looking at the race and Hispanic origin of the householder, the decline in real median income was driven by white, non-Hispanic households, while other household’s real incomes held steady.
“This may relate to the fact that tight labor markets disproportionately help lower-income and minority households whose employment and earnings tend to be more elastic to low unemployment than higher-income households.
“This important dynamic, wherein persistently tight labor markets disproportionately help middle and lower-wage workers, has continued into 2023 (unemployment averaged 3.6 percent last year and has held that average so far this year as well), while at the same time inflationary pressures have eased.
“The annual growth rate of the Consumer Price Index peaked in June of last year and has dropped by about two-thirds since then. As the figure below shows, real average hourly earnings for all workers are up 0.6 percent from their 2022 average; for the 80 percent of employees who are production and nonsupervisory workers, wages are up 1.0 percent.
“The CEA’s estimate of monthly real median family income using the Current Population Survey—the concept closest to what Census reports—is up 1.2 percent.
“As a result, real wage measures are higher now than they were before the pandemic, with particularly large gains for low and middle earners—despite the pandemic downturn in 2020 and elevated pandemic inflation in 2021 and 2022,” the WH said.
US Census data just released:
Incomes: US incomes have fallen every year of the Biden Presidency thus far.
Median incomes: The median income last year fell to $74,580. 90th percentile fell to $216,000, and the bottom 10th was $17,100.
Poverty rate – the supplemental poverty… pic.twitter.com/HkpxzpiAka
— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) September 14, 2023
