The U.S. Census on Sept. 10 released its annual reading of real household median income, finding that after adjusting for inflation, income is still below that of 2019 levels prior to the Covid pandemic, with 2019 being at $81,210 while 2023 came in still at $80,610 after all the inflation is considered.
In other words, under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, American households are no better off than they were four years ago before Covid.
The reason is that when you look at nominal household income, since 2019, it has only increased 17.3 percent. Whereas, consumer prices are up 19.2 percent during that same time.
This is true by other measures as well. Since Feb. 2021, overall consumer prices for everything are up 19.2 percent. Personal incomes, which include government transfer payments from all the printed money, are only up 18.6 percent. Median nominal weekly earnings for wage and salary workers are only up 17 percent.
The news comes as 49 percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse in the latest Economist-YouGov poll taken Sept. 8 to Sept. 10, including 54 percent of women and 55 percent of independents. They’re right, with unemployment now up 1.4 million since Dec. 2022 after peak inflation.
Only 19 percent said it was getting better, and 27 percent said about the same. 5 percent said they didn’t know.
Interestingly, 54 percent said the best economic indicator was “[t]he prices of goods and services you buy”, including 53 percent of men, 55 percent of women and 53 percent of independents. Here, again, they’re right — when consumer prices get above what people can afford to pay, they max out their credit cards and the economy overheats, eventually leading to a downturn. It’s a leading indicator.
In the Sept. 10 ABC News debate between Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Harris could not or would not say whether the American people are better off than they were four years ago, despite the answer being fairly obvious from a financial perspective, instead dodging the very first question of the debate.
That alone explains Harris’ call for another debate with Trump, which Trump has now rejected. The post-debate CNN flash poll showed Trump led by 20 points on the economy, 55 percent to 35 percent, based on what the American people saw in the debate. If the election boils down to bread-and-butter household budgets — as it occasionally does — Harris could be in real trouble.
This is a rare historic situation — with prices outpacing incomes — it happened during parts of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush’s administrations, all one-term presidents. But with just four months left in the calendar year, Biden and Harris might be the first administration where it persisted throughout the entire presidency, that is, over the entire four-year period. We’ll see. How much that impacts the election in November remains to be seen. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
