“It’s not hard to see why middle-class Americans are frustrated,” said Heather Long, chief economist at the Navy Federal Credit Union. “The frozen job market, tariffs and Medicaid cuts are going to put even more of a squeeze in 2025 on middle and lower-income households.”
For richest 10% of households, incomes rose 4.2% to $251,000, while for the poorest one-tenth saw a 2.2% rise to $19,900. A household is defined by Census as a family unit or an individual living alone or living with people who aren’t relatives.
Earnings for women barely rose, while male earnings increased, widening the gender wage gap for the second straight year after two decades of narrowing. Women on average now earn 80.9% of what men earn, down from 82.7% in 2023.
Typical US households are earning like it’s 2019
The income for the typical U.S. household barely rose last year and essentially matched its 2019 peak, the Census Bureau said Tuesday, as stubbornly high inflation offset wage gains. Highest-earning households received healthy inflation-adjusted income increases, while middle- and lower-income households saw little gain.
The Median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 1.3% in 2024 to $83,730, the Census Bureau said. This illustrates why many Americans have been dissatisfied with the economy since the pandemic, even as unemployment has been historically low: Median household incomes are essentially unchanged from five years earlier, the report showed. It’s a sharp contrast from the preceding five-year period, 2014 to 2019, when median household income rose nearly 21%.