Personal incomes fall more during ‘recovery’ than during the recession

America’s longest economic recession since WWII, ended in June of 2009. The recession’s end means that our economy has allegedly been in recovery mode since July of 2009, more than two and a half years.
If we are in recovery, why have American’s incomes dropped more during the recovery than they did in the recession? The facts are clear.

Personal incomes fell during the recession by 3.2%.
During the recovery (since July 2009), personal incomes have fallen an additional 6.7%.

Those numbers were posted in a report by Sentier Research using numbers provided by the U.S. Census. (The RED line is the Household Income Index)


The Obama administration has been touting the “recovery” of the American economy and yet this recent data seems to demonstrate that the average household is still waiting for some of the benefits seen in the stock market.
Jeff Anderson of The Weekly Standard drilled deeper into the Sentier report and found even more information that might be cause for concern in the White House.

The income drop was steeper for those under 25 years of age (their incomes were down 9.5 percent), for those between 25 and 34 years of age (down 9.8 percent), for black Americans (down 9.4 percent), for families with three or more children (down 9.5 percent), and for families headed by part-time workers (down 11.5 percent).

Young people and African Americans were two of the strongest voting blocks for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. Seeing that both of those groups are being hit harder than the rest of the population represents an opportunity for the GOP and a challenge for Obama.