Americans’ Incomes Have Fallen $3,040 During the Obama ‘Recovery’

Americans must be wondering how much more of this "recovery" they can afford.  New figures from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household's real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama "recovery."  Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession.  Now, after 38 months of this "recovery," it has fallen to $50,678 - a drop of $3,040 per household. 

Yet it gets worse.  Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the "recovery" than they did during the recession.  In fact, they've dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession.  From the start to the end of the recession, the real median income of American households fell $1,413, or 2.6 percent.  From the end of the recession to the present day, it has dropped $3,040, or 5.7 percent.  This begs the question:  What kind of "recovery" compares unfavorably with the recession from which it's ostensibly recovering?

Two of the groups hit hardest have been ones that turned out in abundance for Obama in 2008:  black Americans and younger Americans (those between the ages of 25 and 34).  During the first three years of the Obama "recovery," the real median household income for black Americans dropped a whopping 11.1 percent.  For Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 - the group most apt, as Paul Ryan put it, to be "staring up at fading Obama posters" and looking to "get going with life" - real median household income dropped 8.9 percent.

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