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The Trump Economy - Real Median Household Income

Ekosj
@Ekosj
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The numbers for 2025 just came out. And they are really good. It’s too bad we won’t know about 2026 until September 2027, but let’s look at what we do know…

Real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) Median Household Income:

2024 was $85,210
2025 was $87,460

That’s a one-year gain of $2,250 or 2.64%. That’s spectacular. Of course, as the stockbroker commercials caution: past performance is no guarantee of future. But, by way of comparison…

Obama's total gain over 8 years was $4,970, or 6.88%.

Biden's total gain over 4 years was $1,620 (1.94%).

Trump v1 total gain over 4 years was $6,360 (8.24%).

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Discussion (16)

  • Steven Seward@StevenSeward

    This certainly sounds like good news, but when I looked at a chart plotting the growth in wages versus the inflation rate, it seems that the most recent data shows wages in the last year barely keeping ahead of inflation by a microscopic amount (.29% or less than three-tenths of one percent). In fact it shows wages losing to inflation during the Spring of this year. The tiny recent bump on the chart seems pretty insignificant compared to most previous years or individual months. Click on the link to see embedded detail on the chart.

    usafacts.org

    Open link

  • GPentelie@GPentelie
    ReplyingtoSteven Seward

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    This certainly sounds like good news, but when I looked at a chart plotting the growth in wages versus the inflation rate, it seems that the most recent data shows wages in the last year barely keeping ahead of inflation by a microscopic amount (.29% or less than three-tenths of one percent). In fact it shows wages losing to inflation during the Spring of this year. The tiny recent bump on the chart seems pretty insignificant compared to most previous years or individual months.

    Firstly, Ekosj is talking about 2025 vs 2024, since (as he clearly pointed out) data for 2026 is not yet available.

    Secondly, ...

    From Jan'25 to now (so as not to cherry-pick "the most recent data" for nitpickingly contrarian purposes), ...

    Average weekly earnings (CES0500000011) have outpaced inflation (CPIAUCSL) by about 1.5%. Pretty good.

    Onward.

  • Ekosj@Ekosj
    ReplyingtoSteven Seward

    Steven Seward (View Comment):

    This certainly sounds like good news, but when I looked at a chart plotting the growth in wages versus the inflation rate, it seems that the most recent data shows wages in the last year barely keeping ahead of inflation by a microscopic amount (.29% or less than three-tenths of one percent). In fact it shows wages losing to inflation during the Spring of this year. The tiny recent bump on the chart seems pretty insignificant compared to most previous years or individual months. Click on the link to see embedded detail on the chart.

    https://usafacts.org/answers/are-wages-keeping-up-with-inflation/country/united-states/

    Very true. But Average Earnings and Median Household Income are two different things as a look at 2020 clearly shows. One doesn’t necessarily translate into another. It’s hard, but we got’sta wait and see.

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