Inflation-adjusted incomes hit pre-pandemic levels in 2023, offsetting some inflation pressure

WASHINGTON (AP) — The inflation-adjusted median income of U.S. households rebounded last year to roughly its 2019 level, overcoming the biggest price spike in four decades to restore most Americans’ purchasing power.

The proportion of Americans living in poverty also fell slightly last year, to 11.1 percent, from 11.5 percent in 2022. But the ratio of women’s median earnings to men’s widened for the first time in more than two decades as men’s income rose more than women’s in 2023.

The latest data came Tuesday in an annual report from the Census Bureau, which said the median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 4 percent to $80,610 in 2023, up from $77,450 in 2022. It was the first increase since 2019, and is essentially unchanged from that year’s figure of $81,210, officials said. (The median income figure is the point at which half the population is above and half below and is less distorted by extreme incomes than the average.)

“We are back to that pre-COVID peak that we experienced,” said Liana Fox, assistant division chief in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division at the Census Bureau.

The figures could become a talking point in the presidential campaign if Vice President Kamala Harris were to point to them as evidence that Americans’ financial health has largely recovered after inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in 2022. Former President Donald Trump might counter that household income grew faster in his first three years in office than in the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, though income fell during his administration after the pandemic struck in 2020.