Record rise in income

Record rise in incomes could boost Clinton

The income hike isn’t likely to impress Trump, who insists that the federal government’s economic statistics are rigged.

By Marianne LeVine and Timothy Noah

Since the 1990s, weak income growth for the typical American family has been a talking point for both parties, the caveat at the end of any otherwise favorable employment report under George W. Bush or Barack Obama.

But a Census Bureau report released Tuesday morning showed the largest single-year boost in median household income in nearly half a century, prompting the White House to declare that Democratic policies are working. That's welcome news for Hillary Clinton's campaign — though it may prove a blip in an otherwise dismal trend dating back two decades.

According to the census report, median household income increased 5.2 percent in 2015, to $56,516. That was the first annual increase of any kind, after inflation, since the Great Recession of 2007-09, and the largest recorded annual increase since the data series started in 1967.

The Clinton campaign immediately retweeted a favorable comment on the findings by University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers — adding, mischievously, a 2004 quote from Trump: “It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than under the Republicans.”

In a blog post, Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the report “shows the remarkable progress that American families have made as the recovery continues to strengthen.”

According to the report, last year's median household income was up $2,798 from an inflation-adjusted $53,718 in 2014.

The income hike isn’t likely to impress Trump, who insists that the federal government’s economic statistics are rigged. In an economic speech last month, Trump said the 5 percent unemployment rate was “one of the biggest hoaxes in American politics,” and on Monday he told CNBC that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is keeping interest rates low “because she’s obviously political and doing what Obama wants her to do.”

But Tuesday's good news was difficult to refute. In a written statement, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) ignored the finding on household income and focused on the report's finding that 13.5 percent of Americans live in poverty. "Today’s report is another disappointing confirmation that too many Americans are still struggling to provide for their families and reach their full potential," he said.

Even so, Brady conceded that the poverty rate fell 1.2 percentage points over 2014 — the largest annual decline since 1968.

The 2015 income jump wasn't sufficient to boost the median above its pre-recession level.

"Yeah, it’s great that in the last year we saw an increase in household income, but we’re still below 2007 numbers,” said Aparna Mathur, resident scholar in economic policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

According to the census report, in 2015 household median income remained, after inflation, 1.6 percent lower than in 2007 and 2.4 percent lower than in 1999.

But Mathur didn't dispute that the latest news was favorable. "This reflects the labor market is recovering," said Mathur. "That’s the reason we’re seeing household income going up."

Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, went further, saying “This is the kind of report you’d expect as the economy moves closer to full employment.”

James Sherk, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, warned that changes in the Census Bureau's questionnaire elevated income numbers after 2013. Its survey "systematically reports higher income for years 2014 and onwards than it would have using the old survey methodology," he said. But that wouldn't account for the large jump between 2014 and 2015.

Sherk also noted that in a less-sluggish economic recovery the income jump recorded for 2015 would have occurred years earlier. "The growth in 2015 ... is long overdue," he said. "This has been the slowest recovery in the postwar era.”

Some doubt lingers whether incomes are rising as fast in 2016 as they did in 2015. Gross domestic product grew more robustly in 2015 than it has thus far this year. The Commerce Department reported last month that real GDP grew an anemic 1.1 percent in the second quarter of 2016. That was higher than the first quarter of 2016’s 0.8 percent but below the fourth quarter of 2015’s 1.4 percent.

On the other hand, wages — as distinct from income, which includes investment gains — have been rising more briskly in 2016 than they did last year. The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute calculates that nominal wage growth was up 2.51 percent in August over the previous year. In August 2015 nominal wage growth was up 2.08 percent.

The census report even delivered mildly favorable news on the intractable problem of income inequality, reporting a 4.7 percent decline in the ratio of household income at the 90th and 10th percentiles. The ratio also declined in 2014. Other inequality measures showed no statistically significant change.

The most lopsided increases in income inequality over the past two decades have occurred in income share for the top 1 percent versus the bottom 99 percent. In June, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez reported that although "income inequality remains extremely high," the recovery "now looks much less lopsided than in previous years," with incomes for the bottom 99 percent up 3.9 percent in 2015. That, Saez said, was "the best annual growth rate since 1999."

Even so, an online database maintained by Saez, Thomas Piketty and other leading economists shows income share for the top 1 percent in 2015 approaching, at 22 percent, an earlier peak of 23.50 in 2007 and the all-time high of 23.94 in 1928, the year before the stock market crash and the onset of the Great Depression.

According to Tuesday’s report, Hispanic households saw a 6.1 percent increase in real median household income in 2015, non-Hispanic white households saw a 4.4 percent increase, and black households saw a 4.1 percent increase. Asian households did not see a statistically significant change in real median household income.

Men and women working full-time, year-round, saw their first significant annual increase in real median earnings since 2009. Men in that group experienced a 1.5 percent increase between 2014 and 2015, while women working full-time experienced a 2.7 percent increase. The female-to-male earnings ratio was 80 percent, close to the 2014 ratio.

The supplemental poverty rate, another poverty measure that considers government assistance programs for low-income families, declined to 14.3 percent, down 1 percentage point from 2014.

Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, attributed part of the decline in the poverty rate to recent minimum wage hikes at the state and local level and federal assistance programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.