This Downturn is Different.

[RichardAWilson]

http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/real-household-median-income.jpg

[RGacky3]

And its not gonna get any better in the US.

[RichardAWilson]

This is the first decade of median household income decline since the 1930s.

[Judicator]

Household income, what a deliberately misleading statistic, especially when household size has decreased over time:

http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/demographics/census-data-average-us-household-size-declines-to-26-10679/census-bureau-households-by-size-1970-2007jpg/

[jake williams]

Household income, what a deliberately misleading statistic, especially when household size has decreased over time:

http://www.marketingcharts.com/topics/demographics/census-data-average-us-household-size-declines-to-26-10679/census-bureau-households-by-size-1970-2007jpg/
According to that chart, the only significant change in the data is between 1970 and 1980 (or, presumably, 1969-79, or the first data point on RAW's chart).

But if you want to make the household size point, you should be noting two things. First, household sizes typically increase during recessions, especially long-term recessions, because divorces are less frequent and adult children either don't leave home, or return home (of course a similar story can be told of elderly parents). Thus if anything measures of median household income understate the point being made.

Secondly, if your argument is that more people are in the workforce (as single adults rather than dependent children/spouses), then what the data represent are that people are working more and bringing in the same amount of money, or less.

Anyway, I think one thing to take issue with the actual data presented is the fact that the choice of dates is misleading. You'd get a very different chart of decade-on-decade changes had you used the year mid-decade, and so on. 1979, '89 and '99 happen to be close to the peaks of their respective business cycles. This time the peak was in mid-2008, not 2009. Had it been in 2009 or 2010, your chart would look different.

[Jose Gracchus]

It also masks deeper changes, whereby to sustain a household in 2010 often requires 2-3 paychecks/household rather than the former 1 paycheck/household, and a termination of the 8 hr/day, 40hr/week standard for a return to beginning of the 20th century hours worked per individual earner per week. The American working class has been desperately trying to pull every resource available to stay afloat since the beginning of real retrogression nearly forty years ago in the 1970s. This most recent and severe acute crisis within the context of a long-era of chronic crisis and decline simply shows that not even by sending Mom into the workforce, not even by adding 25-50% more labor hours per laborer per week, not even with sophisticated 'defer endlessly til someday' cheap credit mechanisms, and not even by reliance on speculative asset bubbles even by working people (house-flipping and home equity more generally, old tech and stock bubbles), can the working-class keep up anymore. They are at the end of their rope.

[RichardAWilson]

You're right, household income is misleading in the sense that both husband and wife are working. In the 1960s, husbands often worked and the women raised the children. [Meaning the average household is working more hours for a small increase in income] Your information is worthless considering people are having fewer children, which didn't work to begin with.

Indeed, had those women not entered the workforce, household income would have declined.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/wp-content/uploads/blogger/SKyAUUr-whI/AAAAAAAABLw/vzeVSMcAtFk/s1600/Real%20Hourly%20Earnings.png

[Judicator]

According to that chart, the only significant change in the data is between 1970 and 1980 (or, presumably, 1969-79, or the first data point on RAW's chart).

But if you want to make the household size point, you should be noting two things. First, household sizes typically increase during recessions, especially long-term recessions, because divorces are less frequent and adult children either don't leave home, or return home (of course a similar story can be told of elderly parents). Thus if anything measures of median household income understate the point being made.

In either case it seems the use of household income can only be misleading.



You're right, household income is misleading in the sense that both husband and wife are working. In the 1960s, husbands often worked and the women raised the children. [Meaning the average household is working more hours for a small increase in income] Your information is worthless considering people are having fewer children, which didn't work to begin with.

Indeed, had those women not entered the workforce, household income would have declined.

http://www.creditwritedowns.com/wp-content/uploads/blogger/SKyAUUr-whI/AAAAAAAABLw/vzeVSMcAtFk/s1600/Real%20Hourly%20Earnings.png

What's the original source on these data? Is this only non-salaried positions?