American middle class - THE RIDGEWOOD BLOG.

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, for the first time since 1999 the median U.S. household earned $61,372 last year, meaning half of the families in the country brought in more income than this and half earned less. Crossing the $61,000 mark signals the American middle-class may have finally earned more than it did in 1999, although the Census Bureau cautions that median income last year was not statistically different from 1999 or 2007.

Middle-class income rose to the highest recorded levels in 2017 and the national poverty rate declined as the benefits of the strong economy lifted the fortunes of more Americans, the U.S. Census reported Wednesday.

Middle-class household income has been rising steadily in recent years as the economy rebounded from the deep recession . After a period of economic stagnation millions of Americans have found jobs again.

Overall, just over half of American adults were in the middle class in 2016. That’s up slightly from 2011, but down from 61% in 1971. The Census Bureau also reported that the U.S. poverty rate declined modestly to 12.3 percent, the lowest level in years and a sign the economic devastation from the Great Recession is subsiding.

Blog Editors Note : try increasing taxes, insurance and education costs , coupled with decline of the two parent household , decline of work ethic, and regulating small business out of existence

By John Aidan Byrne

December 27, 2015 | 2:34am

Downward mobility is catching on fast with America’s new economic underdogs — the emerging middle-class minority.

The ranks of the American middle class have sunk to a shocking new low.

After four decades as an economic majority, middle-class Americans are no longer in that admirable place. They’re down to 49.9 percent from 61 percent of the population in 1971, with the ranks of the poor and ultrarich growing to a majority in the US.

“The fabric of income distribution is stretching thin,” Rakesh Kochhar, lead author of the recent Pew Research Center study “The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground,” told The Post.

“There’s been a hollowing out in the middle, a bulking up on the edges. The gaps are at record highs,” Kochhar said, adding that the wealth of upper-income families is now about seven times that of the middle class, compared with three times about 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, the middle-class share of US household income has plunged from 62 percent in 1970 to 43 percent today.

And for lower-income families looking to move up to middle-class status, that accomplishment is getting harder to pull off, according to new analysis.

Analysts offer no single explanation for the decline of America’s middle class.

Years of wage stagnation, the decline of unions, a skills gap, economic malaise, taxation, debt and policymaking are often cited, as is technological efficiency in a more globalized economy that rewards outsourcing. Some analysts say the Fed’s trillions of dollars in quantitative easing ended up disproportionately in the hands and wallets of bankers and other upper-middle-class Americans.

https://nypost.com/2015/12/27/the-rise-and-fall-of-middle-class-america/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow

The Middle-class is Back !

Obamanomics: The rise and fall of the American middle class