Two years since the process of ‘recovery’ began in US, the American households are worse off in terms of median incomes and poverty levels than they were during the recession period.
The median income of American households fell 4.1% between 2009 and 2011, as much as it did during the Great Recession period of 2007-2009, suggests a research by Pew Research Center. The median income for US households in 2011 was $50,054, down from $52,195 in 2009, the year the Great Recession ended. Between 2007 and 2009 the median income of households had declined from $54,489 to $52,195, a 4.2% drop.
The poverty rate went up from 14.3% in 2009 to 15% in 2011. In 2007 the poverty level had stood at 12.5%.
The current 'recovery' is also the most negative for household income during any post-recession period in the past four decades
US households experienced lingering losses during the recoveries from the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions, but those losses were less than half of the decrease in the first two years of the current economic recovery. In 1990-91 and 2001 recessions— median household income fell by 1.3% in the first two years following the end of each of those two recessions.
The median household income hasn’t touched its peak of $54,932 since 1999.
“The malaise in income, poverty and wealth in part reflects the weak performance of the US labor market,” the report said.
Though the unemployment rate declined to 8.9% in 2011 from 9.3% in 2009, the median number of weeks people are unemployed climbed sharply in the recovery period, from 15.1 in 2009 to 21.4 in 2011.
Share of families with at least one unemployed member nearly doubled during the Great Recession and remains at a high level. In 2007, 6.3% of the nation’s families had at least one unemployed member, which jumped to 12% in 2009 and declined only slightly to 11.5% in 2011.
Looking at the latest numbers, unemployment in US declined to 8.1% in August from 8.3% in July.
US grew 2.3% in the second quarter of 2012 and 2.4% in the first quarter of the year.