So wages were slowly but steadily rising until covid. Honestly, the shame there is the fact that that workers didn’t play hard ball when employers were desperate.
Now do it in percentages and compare it to inflation. 😬
Nice to see a post covid recovery, but it looks like the slope was much better between 2012-2019 after declining from 2007-2011.
– People subconsciously compare themselves to others on social media (including reddit).
– There are constant doom and gloom headlines about how bad things are, because outrage gets the most clicks and views. So, people think things are worse than they really are.
[deleted]
The high points (around 2006, 2019, and 2023) appear to correspond to peaks in labor market tightness, when there were more jobs than people.
Which makes sense. When the supply of workers is low relative to demand, prices (wages) go up, and vice-versa.
As it unfortunately looks like the ratio is swinging away from labor’s favor to capital, I suspect real median household income is likely to follow.
15% increase in 25 years is awful. It should be closer to 50%
Interestingly, [real median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N) rose even faster, growing 4.2% compared to just 1.2% for median household income. Initially I thought that household size decreased during the same time period, but it [turns out not really](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cWvT) (at least not on average, it’s at least theoretically possible it still happened at the median). Would be worth some digging to figure out the discrepancy.
A more meaningful plot would be a ratio of that to the consumer price index, to see where buying power reached a peak.
EDIT: Ehh… I missed that line at the end, saying it’s already adjusted for inflation.
Now I’m curious how 2025 looks.
And to think ~~Biden~~ Harris (oops) lost because the media had everyone convinced they were so bad off after inflation she (and Biden) had nothing to do with. When it fact it was literaly the best financial position Americans had been in. I remember posting on subs because there was data basically showing this a year ago for overall non-executive pay, and of course got massively downvoted even on Reddit.
This is one metric, but I’ll wager doing this in quintiles is much more meaningful/illustrative.
So household income went up 15% since i bought my house in 2013, meanwhile that same house doubled in value/price in the same amount of time.
Doomer bros….we just lost
Median wages have gone up $10k since 2000. We bought a new 3 br/ba new home in 99 for $140k. That same house is valued at $480k today.
How much of this is just huge rise in the top 5% of households? I certainly don’t see any improvement on the ground here in lower middle incomeville.
I read from some people that the real problem isn’t even just inflation but inflation on things that are necessities like housing costs, groceries etc., there’s a term for it but i don’t remember it unfortunately. Inflation index has thousands of items and a lot of the stuff isn’t very relevant for average people.
Now graph it vs median home prices
I don’t understand inflation adjustment. If I use index based representation, I see a income increase from 2007 to 2025, of 114.7%. Cool.
But electricity is up 165%. Ground beef up 280%. Chicken breast up 125. White bread up 145. Eggs data only goes up to 2024, but it was up 189%, and I think we all know it certainly hasn’t gone down. One of the rent indexes is up 179%. Choice sirloin is only up 195 though. Interesting.
I guess the inflation calculation is mostly with previous data, and current data would just be nominal dollars? Whatever real dollars the median income was in 2007 was lower relatively speaking adjusting for the cost of living items?
I dunno. I feel like if I made 50k in 2007 (approximate nominal median income), and 84k now, in a median sort of city, with rent not quite doubled, just like a lot of other items, I’m not sure I’d feel that much better. I guess the dollar amount of any savings I can make would be higher. But again, the value of those dollars against my primary needs isn’t better. If I was saving to buy a home, the median listing price /sqft is up 180% since 2016, (didn’t have older data). That basically means down payment size is higher by the same ratio. And again, income wasn’t up that high (111% vs 2016).
Couldn’t find a top 1% histogram. But 81st-90th percentile income increased 143% from 2014, and 91st+ increased 153%. And sure, that’s lower than a lot of cost of living stuff. But above p95 I don’t think most of them are concerned about the cost of NEEDS. And I use p90, p95 rather than something lower, because this is income not wealth. The truly wealthy, or just non w2 income people tend to have lower income, so far as the tax man is concerned.
I dunno why I did all that. I think I just want to get a feel for why it doesn’t feel this way. A nontrivial increase in quality of life was implied. And it definitely doesn’t feel that way for many people.
Broad macroeconomic data is essentially useless for identifying problems.
Just look at this chart, don’t you understand median income has gone up! You aren’t actually struggling to pay your bills!
You’d almost say that’s a good thing until you remember the total inflation rate was 87% between 2000 and 2025.
Why doesn’t it feel that way for more and more and more American families out there? Something isn’t making sense
Employers: See? We don’t need to give our employees wages!
Would love to see this grouped by age. I’d be pretty shocked if the median household wasn’t significantly older in ‘24 vs ‘00
Wages rose to all time highs on Biden’s watch.
how is everything 4x more expensive but income is up 10%
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From the new data release. Found here https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N. Adjusted using C-CPI-U. Made with Datawrapper.
So wages were slowly but steadily rising until covid. Honestly, the shame there is the fact that that workers didn’t play hard ball when employers were desperate.
Now do it in percentages and compare it to inflation. 😬
Nice to see a post covid recovery, but it looks like the slope was much better between 2012-2019 after declining from 2007-2011.
Looks like [C-CPI-U](https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/chained-cpi-questions-and-answers.htm) accounts for inflation pretty well including housing. My thoughts on why many people “feel” like this is inaccurate:
– [More people than ever are trying to do it alone/single.](https://usafacts.org/articles/how-has-the-structure-of-american-households-changed-over-time/). That’s obviously going to be much harder financially.
– People subconsciously compare themselves to others on social media (including reddit).
– There are constant doom and gloom headlines about how bad things are, because outrage gets the most clicks and views. So, people think things are worse than they really are.
[deleted]
The high points (around 2006, 2019, and 2023) appear to correspond to peaks in labor market tightness, when there were more jobs than people.
https://i.imgur.com/JdigT6c.png
Which makes sense. When the supply of workers is low relative to demand, prices (wages) go up, and vice-versa.
As it unfortunately looks like the ratio is swinging away from labor’s favor to capital, I suspect real median household income is likely to follow.
15% increase in 25 years is awful. It should be closer to 50%
Interestingly, [real median personal income](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N) rose even faster, growing 4.2% compared to just 1.2% for median household income. Initially I thought that household size decreased during the same time period, but it [turns out not really](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cWvT) (at least not on average, it’s at least theoretically possible it still happened at the median). Would be worth some digging to figure out the discrepancy.
A more meaningful plot would be a ratio of that to the consumer price index, to see where buying power reached a peak.
EDIT: Ehh… I missed that line at the end, saying it’s already adjusted for inflation.
Now I’m curious how 2025 looks.
And to think ~~Biden~~ Harris (oops) lost because the media had everyone convinced they were so bad off after inflation she (and Biden) had nothing to do with. When it fact it was literaly the best financial position Americans had been in. I remember posting on subs because there was data basically showing this a year ago for overall non-executive pay, and of course got massively downvoted even on Reddit.
This is one metric, but I’ll wager doing this in quintiles is much more meaningful/illustrative.
So household income went up 15% since i bought my house in 2013, meanwhile that same house doubled in value/price in the same amount of time.
Doomer bros….we just lost
Median wages have gone up $10k since 2000. We bought a new 3 br/ba new home in 99 for $140k. That same house is valued at $480k today.
How much of this is just huge rise in the top 5% of households? I certainly don’t see any improvement on the ground here in lower middle incomeville.
I read from some people that the real problem isn’t even just inflation but inflation on things that are necessities like housing costs, groceries etc., there’s a term for it but i don’t remember it unfortunately. Inflation index has thousands of items and a lot of the stuff isn’t very relevant for average people.
Now graph it vs median home prices
I don’t understand inflation adjustment. If I use index based representation, I see a income increase from 2007 to 2025, of 114.7%. Cool.
But electricity is up 165%. Ground beef up 280%. Chicken breast up 125. White bread up 145. Eggs data only goes up to 2024, but it was up 189%, and I think we all know it certainly hasn’t gone down. One of the rent indexes is up 179%. Choice sirloin is only up 195 though. Interesting.
I guess the inflation calculation is mostly with previous data, and current data would just be nominal dollars? Whatever real dollars the median income was in 2007 was lower relatively speaking adjusting for the cost of living items?
I dunno. I feel like if I made 50k in 2007 (approximate nominal median income), and 84k now, in a median sort of city, with rent not quite doubled, just like a lot of other items, I’m not sure I’d feel that much better. I guess the dollar amount of any savings I can make would be higher. But again, the value of those dollars against my primary needs isn’t better. If I was saving to buy a home, the median listing price /sqft is up 180% since 2016, (didn’t have older data). That basically means down payment size is higher by the same ratio. And again, income wasn’t up that high (111% vs 2016).
Couldn’t find a top 1% histogram. But 81st-90th percentile income increased 143% from 2014, and 91st+ increased 153%. And sure, that’s lower than a lot of cost of living stuff. But above p95 I don’t think most of them are concerned about the cost of NEEDS. And I use p90, p95 rather than something lower, because this is income not wealth. The truly wealthy, or just non w2 income people tend to have lower income, so far as the tax man is concerned.
I dunno why I did all that. I think I just want to get a feel for why it doesn’t feel this way. A nontrivial increase in quality of life was implied. And it definitely doesn’t feel that way for many people.
Broad macroeconomic data is essentially useless for identifying problems.
Just look at this chart, don’t you understand median income has gone up! You aren’t actually struggling to pay your bills!
You’d almost say that’s a good thing until you remember the total inflation rate was 87% between 2000 and 2025.
Why doesn’t it feel that way for more and more and more American families out there? Something isn’t making sense
Employers: See? We don’t need to give our employees wages!
Would love to see this grouped by age. I’d be pretty shocked if the median household wasn’t significantly older in ‘24 vs ‘00
Wages rose to all time highs on Biden’s watch.
how is everything 4x more expensive but income is up 10%
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