It Should Not Surprise Us that 1 in 6 Millennials Have Saved $100k

Recent headlines are telling us that Millennials: 1 in 6 now have $100,000 socked away    And when reading that I wonder 'why is this news'?        Will it be followed by reports that 1 in 50 Millennials are millionaires or that 1 in 2 millenials have over $50k in their 401k?   Cause I suppose both those are true too.

I don't think its any surprise at all that 1 in 6 millennials have over 100k saved.   Theres a few reasons why it should be expected.

Net worth and savings balances increase with age and millennials are aging.   

As millenials get older it is really just a given that their savings will grow on average.  This isn't any kind of generational phenomenon its just a simple reflection of peoples savings growing over time.

In the survey of consumer finances the mean holdings of financial assets by age in 2013 was :

Age of head (years)	Mean  $k
Less than 35	38.3
35–44	148.8
45–54	253.1
55–64	411.2
65–74	566.1
75 or more	314.6

Note this is just among households who have financial assets but >90% do for every age group.
This kind of distribution has held over time too so you could see similar growth of assets by age in previous years.    As you can see there the jump from the under 35 to the 35 -44 age groups crosses the $100k mean.   


If you make a decent amount its not so hard to pile up $100k over a few years. 

I used one of DQYDJ.com's nifty calculators to find the income ranking for people age 18-35 and it shows that ~18% of households with heads in that age group make $100k or more.     If you are in your late 20's or early 30's and make 6 figures then its not too hard or unusual to have piled up $100k across your savings.   A 5% 401k investment and employer match would get you there.

People also inherit money.   

I found this interesting BLS paper with a lot of data on inheritances :
Inheritances and the Distribution of Wealth Or Whatever Happened to the Great Inheritance Boom?
Its a bit old but the figures give us a reference on how common inheritances are and how much people receive.   From 1989 to 2007 about 12% of people under age 35 inherit or receive gifts that average ~$146k.  The average skews high and the median value was $28k.     But still thats a sizable chunk of people who receive large gifts or inheritances.    If the median is $28k received by 12% then 6% of people got over $28k.   I'd assume that 1-2% of people inherit over $100k but that is more an educated guess.

I think that instead of proclaiming a sense of surprise that the younger generation has saved money they should have honestly stated 'hey we shouldn't generalize entire generations'.

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Net Worth by Age Over Time 1989 - 2016

The Survey Of Consumer Finances has net worth broken down by age groups.   They have data going back to 1989 and the report is every three years.    Taking that data and then adjusting for inflation to 2016 I get the following charts showing how net worth has changed for different age groups over the time period :

I also figured the % change from 1989 to 2016 for each age group :

	Mean	Median
Less than 35	83%	72%
35–44	100%	54%
45–54	134%	64%
55–64	194%	98%
65–74	194%	149%
75 or more	225%	187%

--This article may contain referral links which pay this site a commission for purchases made at the sites.

No, Most Americans Aren't Totally Broke

Over on The Simple Dollar someone asked about an article on CNN with the headline of "6 in 10 Americans don't have $500 in savings"     The QA exchange on that was someone asking if that is real and Trent saying he believes it.

I don't believe that 60% of Americans don't have $500.

It seems that we're told by the press over and over that most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck or don't have $1000 or $500 or $X in the bank or similar things.    I've generally accepted this in stride as most people probably do.

But here's the big problem with that claim.    Its based on a survey from Bankrate that asked people how they'd handle an emergency bill.   But I can't find any real details on how the question was asked.   If they just asked "how would you pay for a $500 -1000 emergency expense?" and the answers were just a list of items like savings, credit card, cut spending, etc. then you'll get some wrong results there.   I personally would use a credit card and I'd answer that way.   The article then assumes (wrongly) that I don't have $500 in savings.   But I use credit cards for most everything to get my bonus points.

Survey of Consumer Finances of 2013 has a lot of data on personal finances.    They say specifically how many people have checking and savings accounts and what the mean and median balances are.   93.2% of people have accounts and the median balance was $4100.   That means that 46% of people have over $4100.   This specific data directly refused the idea that 60% (6 in 10) of people don't have $500 in savings.

I'm sure that there are is an unfortunately high amount of people in the nation who don't have $500 available.    But its not 60%.


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Effective Federal Funds Rate for 60+ Years (1954 to 2017)

The St. Louis Fed's FRED database has historical info on the federal funds rate

Wiki says that "In the United States, the federal funds rate is the interest rate at which depository institutions (banks and credit unions) lend reserve balances to other depository institutions overnight, on an uncollateralized basis."

Here's the graphic - click the picture for a full size version:

(source St. Louis Fed )

Seemed to me the trend was gradually going up and then peaking around 1980 then going down.   I used Excel to plot a (polynomial) trend line :

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What Caused Changes in Labor Force Participation 2007-2016

The below information and the graphic are a direct copy/paste off of the Federal Reserve of Atlanta page

The following factors put downward pressure on the labor force participation rate between 2007 and 2016.

Aging of the population: The aging of the population has had a significant effect on the LFP rate. Without the shifting distribution of the population towards older individuals since 2007, the overall labor force participation rate in Q4 2016 would have been 2.1 percentage points higher.
Rising education: Education has become increasingly important in the last couple of decades. Young people are devoting more of their time to schooling instead of the labor market, and older individuals are more likely to return to school to move forward in their careers than in the past. The recession likely amplified these trends as it allowed youth to delay entry into the job market and gave others an opportunity to retool. Rising school attendance explains about 0.9 percentage points of the overall decline between 2007 and 2016.
Health problems: The percent of the population who say they are too sick or disabled to work has been rising for some time, and the rise has been occurring even among young and prime-age individuals. Holding the age distribution of the population fixed at 2007 shares, the increase has contributed 0.6 percentage points to the overall decline in labor force participation.
Shadow labor force: The percent of the population on the margin of the labor force who say they want a job but for some reason are not actively looking for work rose during the recession across all age groups. The contribution of this factor has shrunk over the last couple of years, but still accounts for about 0.4 points of the overall decline between 2007 and 2016.

The following factors put upward pressure on the labor force participation rate between 2007 and 2016:

Retirement: A significant factor that has worked against declining participation is that a larger share of older Americans are staying in the labor force than in the past. All else being equal, if those people older than 60 were just as likely to retire in 2016 as they were in 2007, the labor force participation rate would now be about 0.90 percentage point lower.
Family responsibilities: The share of the population who chose not to participate in the labor market because they were taking care of their family declined during the Great Recession—especially among women. This pushed the labor force participation rate of women about 0.55 percentage points higher than it would have been between 2007 and 2010, but this effect has largely dissipated.

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Americans Are Not All Living Paycheck to Paycheck

Over at The Simple Dollar they posted an article titled : Instant Gratification: Why 76% of Americans Live Paycheck to Paycheck and How You Can Beat That Cycle with 12 Simple Strategies
That 76% number seemed awfully high.    Way too high.  Unbelievably high.     But there is a survey that claimed that figure of course.   Here is a reference to the survey in a CNN article 76% of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck.   They say its an survey from Bankrate.    I found that survey : 76% of Americans Don't Have Enough Emergency Savings and I quote :

"Fewer than one in four Americans (24%) have enough savings to cover at least six months' expenses"
Having less than 6 months expenses is not "living paycheck to paycheck".    6 months of living expenses is actually a pretty healthy emergency fund.    Living paycheck to paycheck would mean you have less than a months expenses in savings.

The Bankrate article goes on to say: "Exactly half have less than three months' expenses saved up, and 27% have no emergency savings whatsoever."

Bankrate also has a page with charts on the topic.    We can find a little more data there.

Their survey found that the breakdown of emergency savings is :

No savings	27%
Less than 3 months	23%
3 to 5 months	21%
6 months or more	24%
no answer	6%

If you've got over a month savings then you're not really living "paycheck to paycheck" in my opinion.   So I'd say that really somewhere between 27% and 50% are  living "paycheck to paycheck".    Its probably more like 40% who really have under a month in savings.   But that doesn't even mean that 40% are living "paycheck to paycheck" since "savings" isn't the only way to have money.     I'm sure there are people with a pile of money in stocks or other assets but with less than a months cash in a savings account.    Such people may just rely on credit cards or other lines of credit for emergency expenses that might exceed a months spending.  

As another data point I also found the Federal Reserve topic Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households. (full report)   and they said : "When asked if they have set aside an emergency or rainy day fund that would cover three months of expenses, nearly half of respondents (47 percent) indicate that they do."   Which agrees with the Bankrate figure on that matter.


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Changes in Incomes from 1960 to 2014

TheBigPicture shared a link to an article Shifting Incomes for American Jobs from Flowing Data site.
I of course got excited, because I mean who wouldn't get excited?    Flowing Data has created an interactive graphic that shows the distribution of incomes for various general occupational groups for 1960, 1980, 2000 and 2014.    !!!      If you go play around with the graphic and click on the different years you can see circles for each group bounce up and down between the income levels.  

Many occupations gained in incomes over time with more people making higher incomes.    Some occupations mostly stayed the same.  

Unfortunately it looks like the construction industry lost ground overall.   Just looking at the dots in the graphic and doing a manual count it looks to me like the median income dropped from around $35-40k in 1960 to more like $25-30k in 2014.     Overall, then wages in construction were down for most people.     Thats not good.   A handful of people in construction did better but only at the top.     In both 1960 and 2014 about 20% of the trades made over $50k.        However in 1960 nobody made over $75k but by 2014 there are 3 people making that much.  

But as I said, other occupations were either up or flat.    Construction appears to be about the only exception.   Thats good news.   For the most part across the occupations it was the top 20-50% that saw gains and the rest stayed where they were.    

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Large Business Percent of Jobs and Payroll By State

Nationally most jobs and most wages are at big companies (over 500 employees).    52% of all jobs and 58% of all wages in the USA are from big companies.    But of course it varies by state.    In Montana only 32% of jobs are from big companies and its 59% in Nevada.      Montana again has the lowest wages from big companies at 39% and at the other end Georgia has the most wages at 62%.

I found data on employment based on firm size data on the SBA website.   Specifically :  Table 1- Number of firms, establishments, employment, and payroll by firm size, state, and industry

The following table shows the % of jobs that are with big companies and the % of wages earned by workers of big companies.

State	jobs	pay
Alabama	52%	56%
Alaska	46%	53%
Arizona	55%	61%
Arkansas	51%	58%
California	50%	58%
Colorado	51%	58%
Connecticut	51%	59%
Delaware	54%	61%
District of Columbia	52%	57%
Florida	57%	60%
Georgia	56%	62%
Hawaii	48%	52%
Idaho	44%	51%
Illinois	53%	58%
Indiana	53%	59%
Iowa	51%	55%
Kansas	48%	54%
Kentucky	54%	59%
Louisiana	46%	52%
Maine	43%	48%
Maryland	49%	54%
Massachusetts	54%	60%
Michigan	49%	55%
Minnesota	52%	60%
Mississippi	52%	57%
Missouri	52%	59%
Montana	32%	39%
Nebraska	52%	58%
Nevada	59%	60%
New Hampshire	48%	51%
New Jersey	50%	58%
New Mexico	45%	50%
New York	49%	58%
North Carolina	54%	61%
North Dakota	41%	49%
Ohio	53%	60%
Oklahoma	47%	53%
Oregon	44%	53%
Pennsylvania	53%	59%
Rhode Island	45%	50%
South Carolina	53%	58%
South Dakota	41%	46%
Tennessee	56%	60%
Texas	54%	60%
Utah	53%	57%
Vermont	41%	41%
Virginia	53%	58%
Washington	48%	58%
West Virginia	49%	56%
Wisconsin	49%	56%
Wyoming	38%	47%
United States	52%	58%

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Average Profit Margin is 7.5% For 212 Industries

Apparently the public opinion is that businesses have a profit margin of 36%.     However the actual average profit margin for 212 industries is 7.5%.

I'm simply paraphrasing what is covered in the article The public thinks the average company makes a 36% profit margin, which is about 5X too high from the American Enterprise Institute.

This isn't the same as saying that the average business has a margin of 7.5% but that the average among industries is 7.5%.   But its useful to know that a lot of industries have lower margins.

That article got their data on industry margins from Yahoo's business site.

A lot of industries have low profit margins.     Grocery stores are at 1.4%.    Movie theatres are 1%.   It also includes those industries that are losing money (at least temporarily).      Oil and gas drilling and exploration is at -6.8%.       On the other hand there are industries that make pretty high profit margins.    Wireless communications is at 29.7%.   Real estate development is at 38.7%.      Regional Midwest banks made 24.1%.    Around the middle are things like restaurants at 7.5%, jewelry stores at 7.6% and multimedia and graphics software at 7.1%.

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I Wouldn't Worry About A Sub-Prime Auto Loan Crisis or Bubble

Looks like the "bubble to get worried about" for the day is the sub prime auto loan bubble.    I just saw two references about it in my daily twitter feed.     Apparently Esquire print magazine has an article and so does Slate.

So why shouldn't we get all worked up about it?

Buried halfway down a NYT article from 2014 in a mult-part discussion of the sub prime auto loan topic, they say :
"The size of the subprime auto loan market is a tiny fraction of what subprime mortgage market was at its peak, and its implosion would not have the same far-reaching consequences."

According to Credit.com as of 2015 the total car loan debt was $950B and sub prime market was 27% of that.    Thats about $256B in debt total.     I don't see general information on the average interest rates for the loans.   One reference, in that 2014 NYT article says that some bundled loans averaged 18.4%.    Of course thats way higher than the average car loan in general which is currently around 3% (sourced again from NYT).    

In 2006, just a single year, $600B in subprime home loans were originated.   (from Wikipedia)

Outstanding mortgage debt peaked around $14.7T in 2008 (the fed historical data )     Before the bubble burst about 20% of new loans were subprime.  

I also don't see any sign that this is really any kind of bubble.    There have always been high interest rate loans on cars for people with bad credit.   This isn't anything new and the rate of borrowing isn't even hitting the rate from before the recession.   This is really more along the lines of "business as usual" than a bubble as far as I see.

High interest rate car loans are certainly a problem and have really difficult impacts to low income / poor credit rating people who get them.   The loans are also often associated with predatory lending practices.    I don't want to minimize the negative aspect of these loans and the drag they have on peoples finances.    

But there isn't a bubble in the sub prime auto loan market and even if there was, if it were to pop it wouldn't have 1/10 the impact that the great recession housing bust had.


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Rich People Have Half Their Money In Real Estate and Cash

I'm not certain what the common perception of the assets of the wealthy are but I'd think that ownership of stocks is a big part of it.    I think of business ownership as a lot of it.   When you look at the list of richest people in the US you've got Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, the Walton family (Walmart heirs), etc.     Those people own businesses or stock in businesses.  

But on average most of the wealthy in the world aren't heavily invested in stocks or businesses.   Most of the wealthy ($30M+) have their money in real estate and cash as much as anything else.    Bloomberg ran the article Ranks of World's Wealthiest Thin Most Since the Financial Crisis in which we find a pie chart showing the asset mix of the wealthiest.

Half of their money is in :
Primary Residence and second homes = 24%
Real Estate = 11%
Cash = 15%

The other half :
Financial investments = 28%
Personal business 19%
collectibles and precious metal 3%

I'm surprised to see such a high amount in cash at 15%.   Personal housing is also very high at 24%.

I'm not saying its good or bad.   I kind of think its telling that the really rich people have so much in cash and their own housing.    For people that rich to have so much tied up in their own homes doesn't seem so smart.   If you've got $100M and own $25M worth of houses.   That seems like a lot of house.  But then I suppose housing isn't a BAD investment generally.   It usually at least keeps up with inflation (with rare exception like 2007).  

The amount of cash that the wealthy have is also pretty surprising.    If you've got $50M do you really need $7.5M cash balance?     That seems awfully high.    Maybe its a indication the rich are more conservative with their finances.    It could also be skewed by the international mix of the people they looked at.  Maybe if you live in China or France or Brazil then having cash is the smarter way to go.

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The Middle Class Shrinking Isn't The Bad News I Thought It Was

Take a look at this chart  from the Pew Research center:

As you can see there the middle income group is shrinking.   But look closer.    The high income group is growing.    From 1971 to 2015 the high income group grew from 4% to 9%.    Thats a 5% increase.   The middle-high group also grew from 10% to 12% or a 2% increase.    On the low end the growth was less.    The low income group increased from 16% to 20% for a 4% increase.  The upper low group stayed the same at 9%.  

Yes the middle class is shrinking.    But the good news is that the higher income groups are growing more than the low income group.

Of course its not good news that the low income group increased in the past 5 decades.   I had assumed though that all of the erosion of the middle class was putting people into the ranks of the poor.   Thats not the case.   More than not, people who used to be middle class is migrating upwards.

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Are We Due For An Inflation Spike?

When I was a kid the country went through a really bad period of inflation.   I was just a kid at the time so I didn't know what was happening at the time and I actually don't remember any of it.   I only now hear my dad occasionally recall bitterly about the >10% interest rates he was paying on a mortgage.   Recently inflation has been very tame.   Its hardly an issue.  But could we be due for another period of high inflation?

First I'd like to get a picture of how frequently we have seen high inflation periods.   The WSJ published A Brief History of U.S. Inflation Since 1775 which has a chart showing inflation back to 1775.   In that chart we can see periodic periods of high inflation.

There were large peaks of inflation around the years 1775, 1795, 1815, 1865, 1915, 1945 and 1975.
Those peaks are separated by 20, 20, 50, 50, 30, and 30 years respectively.  We haven't gone longer than about 50 years without seeing an inflation spike.   The last inflation spike was about 50 years ago.   We seem due for an inflation spike.

Of course this doesn't mean we're gonna have an inflation spike any time soon.    If you look at the chart from 1775 to 1835 you'd conclude that inflation spikes happen every 20 years and that in 1835 we'd be overdue for one.   But then it took another 30 years after that to see a spike.   For all we know right now we're in a rare long period of low inflation that could last 100 years in total.

Most of the high inflation periods had a cause.  War.   We saw high spikes of inflation near wars : The Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, WWI, and WWII all coincided with major inflation spikes.
I found the article War and Inflation in US History, Not Worth a Continental at The MarketOracle that also has a graph of US inflation history and points out all the wars that matched inflation periods.   They show how each war the US has been in has had an inflation spike associated with it.   That is at least up until the most recent conflicts in the middle east.    So maybe the impact on inflation due to war is different now.

Monetary policy changes can also cause inflation.  In that article from Market Oracle they point to a couple changes in currency policy in the US that coincided with inflation spikes.   People are worried that the monetary policies that the Fed has had for the past several years will ultimately cause inflation.   The quantitative easing policy has effectively printed a pile of money that should, one would assume, result in inflation sooner or later.   But that hasn't happened,, and continues to not happen and not happen,... even though some people have been predicting "hyperinflation" any day now for the past 7-8 years or so.

You'd expect recent wars and monetary policy to cause inflation but it hasn't.   Maybe things have changed and we've learned how to control inflation.   Its hard for me to think that we've truly tamed inflation and that we'll never see an inflationary spike again.    It could all turn south any day now and inflation may be on the near horizon as an inevitable result of the Feds actions.  Or maybe not.  Maybe we'll continue to see the low inflation we've seen the past few decades.   We might have a big war (relatively speaking) that will result in high inflation.   Or maybe not.  

Given what we've seen in history, I think its reasonable to expect a decent spike of inflation at least in some point in the next 20-50 years.   Its not a given but it could very well happen.    Its something you should consider and prepare for the possibility.

Bottom Line:  Are we due for an inflation spike?   Maybe.  Maybe not.
    
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GDP Per Capita By Metropolitan Area 2014

The figures below are straight off the BEA.gov website using their interactive tables.

Here is the top 20:

Area	2014	Rank
United States	$      52,526	--
Midland, TX	$     162,786	1
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA	$     105,482	2
Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk, CT	$      94,349	3
San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, CA	$      80,643	4
Casper, WY	$      76,174	5
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA	$      75,874	6
Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH	$      74,746	7
Trenton, NJ	$      73,719	8
Durham-Chapel Hill, NC	$      73,523	9
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV	$      72,191	10
New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA	$      70,830	11
Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, TX	$      70,097	12
Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA	$      67,256	13
Boulder, CO	$      66,927	14
Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX	$      66,168	15
Anchorage, AK	$      65,838	16
Sioux Falls, SD	$      65,593	17
Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA	$      64,991	18
Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT	$      64,946	19
Madison, WI	$      63,910	20

What I see in the top 20 is big urban areas and a few resource rich areas with mining  or oil money.

And a national map :

(click image for full size)

After I wrote this TheBigPicture linked to a graphic map created by howmuch.net

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Gasoline prices are down 3.4% in the past 12 months

Its always news when the price of gas goes up.   Yet when gas drops in price it doesn't seem to generate front page headlines.   The Energy Information Administration tracks gasoline prices weekly.    As of 9/8 the national average is $3.534.    Last year on 9/9 it was $3.658.   Thats a drop of 3.4% in the past 12 months.    OK thats not much of a drop but its a drop all the same.


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Inflation and Deflation in Consumer Goods

Whenever you hear about inflation you hear about prices going up for something like gasoline, food, college tuition or health care.   Rarely do we hear reports about the items where prices are going down.    But we have major categories of goods where prices do go down and have been on downward trends for some time.    The reality is that for goods a lot of prices go up but a lot also go down.   I think its interesting to see the trend for various products and note the items that have gone down or been flat rather than just focus on only the prices that go up.

Below are the price index graphs for 10 years from 2003 to 2013 for several categories of products.  All of these charts are straight off the BLS.gov site.    I got them by pulling data out of the BLS CPI site for the Department store inventory price index.

Mens Shoes

Infant wear and Furniture

Mens Clothing

Jewelry and silverware

Toilet articles and drugs

Furniture and bedding

Housewares

Major appliances

Radios and television sets

Home improvements

Auto accessories

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Food Spending by Family Size

Last year I wrote about Grocery Spending by Income Group.    Yeah you guessed it, rich people spend more.    Today we'll follow that one up with the sequel and look at how much families spend based on family size.

I got the data straight out of the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey .   Specifically the numbers below are from the tables for Size of consumer unit.


First family size and spending on monthly basis :

Pretty obviously, bigger families spend more.

But what about the amount spent per person? 

There the trend reverses and for larger families they spend less per person.    I assume this is due to a couple factors.   First I'm assuming that the larger the family the more smaller children and I'd assume smaller children consume less food (usually).     So a typical family of 4 with 2 little kids isn't going to eat as much per person as 2 adults would.   Second I'd also guess that larger families are better at economizing on their food spending due to necessity.   Its one thing to splurge on the steak if you're a single person but buying 5 steaks is going to hit your pocket book a lot harder.


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Who's left the job market? Comparing 2007-2010 to 2010-2013

Recently Reuters ran this article : U.S. jobs market dropouts increasingly likely to stay out

And they had this nice bit of information : 

''According to economists who have analyzed Labor Department data, 6.6 million people exited the workforce from 2010 and 2013. About 61 percent of these dropouts were retirees, more than double the previous three years' share.

People dropping out because of disability accounted for 28 percent, also up significantly from 2007-2010. Of those remaining, 7 percent were heading to school, while the other 4 percent left for other reasons.

In contrast, between 2007 and 2010, retirees made up a quarter of the six million people who left the labor force, while 18 percent were classified as disabled. About 57 percent were either in school or otherwise on the sidelines.''

Lets look at that graphically :

and

Thats a pretty big shift.   

The more recent 3 years we can see that most of the people leaving are leaving for retirement.  Thats a demographic change we'd expect due to the baby boomers retiring.   Theres also a fair amount of people going into disability, and I assume many of them are baby boomers too.   Thats also a pretty expected trend.

Compared to the 07-10 period when most people left to go to school or 'other'.  Annoyingly the article doesn't break down the % of people who went to school versus other reasons and lumps them together.   But clearly that large of a drop in the labor pool for school or other is not explained by demographics and is not expected. 


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17 States Require Personal Finance Education in High School - But it Won't Solve Everything

A recent Survey of the States from the Council for Economic Education said that 17 states require personal finance education in high schools.   2 more states require that classes are offered but don't require students take them.   On top of that all 50 states require economics curriculum.    So this is good news.   But its not going to 'fix' everything.

They make kids take a lot of classes in high school but that doesn't mean they all walk out knowing the topic.   Sorry to be cynical.  

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Household Income Percentiles for 2000 to 2012

I recently talked about a survey of Americans asking who felt they were in the middle class vs lower or upper classes.   There has been a large increase in the percent of us who think that we're in the lower class.   I wondered if incomes have plummeted for a large portion of Americans or if this was more of a perception thing.

I found detail on household incomes for each fifth at the Census. 

H1 table - Income Limits for Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Households

Here's what it looks like from 2000 to 2012 :

Thats not too bad looking but now lets look at it in real dollars:

That doesn't look so good.   Incomes are down from 2000 in real dollars in every fifth as well as the top 5%.

Its hard to see detail on the bottom 3 fifth groups given the scale so I'll show those groups separately: 

There you can see more clearly the drop of real incomes for the bottom 60% of people.

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