Yesterday (Sept. 16) the Census Bureau released its 2019 information concerning median household income and poverty rates. Unfortunately, this data is always released in September of the following year, so is already somewhat stale. Just for example, since the information is collected between February and April of the following year, we may not get complete information about the impact of the coronavirus until two years from now!
Also, since the information is across *all* households, not just wage- or salary-earning households, but includes, for example, retirees as well as the unemployed, it should not be used to infer information about wages.
That being said, in 2019 the economy was doing very well, and both un- and under-employment were reaching repeated new lows, and inflation remained subdued, real median household income rose significantly – up 6.8% over 2018:
As is obvious from the graph, this was a new all-time high.
Looks to me like oil prices were about to explode then.
You need to be careful, that data lags, is assorted hedonics and is a function of debt bubbles
Reason, nigh. Oil shot up due to Iran issues shortly. It wasn’t going anywhere with oversupply. Inflation was likely going to rise as it always does in the late cycle and real final demand wasn’t going to grow.
The key is the repo mess in September. That was cycle end.