Income and Poverty in the US

I will jump on the same report everyone is talking about: the US income and poverty numbers from the Census Bureau.  It is sobering reading and really captures not just the impact of the current recession but also the slow erosion of the middle class lifestyle in the US.

Here is the New York Times:

The portion of Americans living in poverty last year rose to the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, fresh evidence that the sluggish economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

And in new evidence of economic distress among the middle class, real median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,400.

So what we have currently is a tremendous number of US households under extreme stress while at the same time we are cutting social services drastically.

Another sobering statistic:

According to the Census figures, the median annual income for a male full-time, year-round worker in 2010 — $47,715 — was virtually unchanged from its level in 1973, when the level was $49,065, in 2010 dollars.