another BS Report: Median Household Income Dropped 4 Percent Since The End Of The Great Recession

[Cryptoad]

"Household" is not a "Unit of Measure" you can have from one to many wage earner in a household....... there is no way to compare households to household unless you know how many wage earners there are in each.

The SSA says the Median income of wage earners has risen since 2008 , from $26,514 /yr to $26,965 /yr.

Still,,,,What a shame that more than half of the working folk in this country earn less that $26,965 / yr


http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/COLA/central.html

[rrneck]

1. Well, it could be relevant.

http://www.census.gov/cps/about/cpsdef.html

A household consists of all the people who occupy a housing unit. A house, an apartment or other group of rooms, or a single room, is regarded as a housing unit when it is occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters; that is, when the occupants do not live with any other persons in the structure and there is direct access from the outside or through a common hall.

A household includes the related family members and all the unrelated people, if any, such as lodgers, foster children, wards, or employees who share the housing unit. A person living alone in a housing unit, or a group of unrelated people sharing a housing unit such as partners or roomers, is also counted as a household. The count of households excludes group quarters. There are two major categories of households, "family" and "nonfamily". (See definitions of Family household and Nonfamily household).

Given the unemployment rate, as well as the rate of people who are underemployed, evaluating households would be a way to take into consideration the aggregate income of people who are not wage earners but who might depend on their income. Of course, in addition to extended family and couch surfers there could be more than one wage earner in each household.

[Cryptoad]

2. no reason not ot evalute households on many things

but you can make income comparisons between households since they number of income earners may vary.

[rrneck]

3. Number of households in the United States

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html
Households, 2007-2011 114,761,359

If you have the number of households and the number of wage earners you can get a picture of income with that dataset. But it's just one method of evaluating an economy.

That dataset might tell you how many people, on average, live in a household are wage earners and how many are not. So, for example, in the aftermath of the housing bubble disaster a lot of people moved back home with their parents or shared housing to keep a roof over their heads. If income and population go up, but the number of households don't keep pace or even goes down, you get another window into the state of the economy and, by extension, the economic circumstances of the average citizen.

Merely knowing someone's income doesn't really tell you much, but if we put income numbers in the context of what that income is used to buy, we get a better picture of the quality of life. So for example, if somebody is making fifty grand a year, but a one bedroom apartment is four thousand dollars a month, he's not really better off.

[Cryptoad]

4. True

Q of life is related to income level in given areas of residence among many other facters such as number of dependents, down to the history of good and bad life choices made.

but its still a shame that in a country as rich as ours the Median Income of wage earners is so low.

[rrneck]

5. Absolutely.

26k and gas is four bucks a gallon. It makes the Gilded Age start to look pretty good.

[pnwmom]

6. It could mean anything. For example, as the economy improved,

some people might have moved out of basements and into their own apartments. Then we have two separate households with two lower incomes than the single household counted a few years earlier.

[rrneck]

7. Yep.

That's why I hate statistics. I'm not smart enough to actually make use of them and I suspect that most of the population is in the same boat.