Whichever presidential candidate who takes office on Jan. 20, 2017, will face an economy beginning to emerge from the long shadow of the 2007 recession. Poverty was down last year, income was up and there were fewer Americans without health insurance, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Median household incomes had their best one-year increase ever, topping $56,500—the highest level since 2007, just before the Great Recession.
More than seven years after the start of the recession, 3.5 million Americans left the ranks of the poor. In addition, unemployment dropped from 6.2 percent in 2014 to 5.3 percent in 2015 accompanied by raises to the minimum wage in 21 states and the District of Columbia.
Notes Sheldon Danziger, president of the Russell Sage Foundation:
"The good news is the economy is moving in the right direction. We've recovered almost all the ground lost during the Great Recession," he says. "The bad news, of course: We've got a long way to go to get people at the bottom and in the middle to where they were at the turn of the century."
Which is to say, the acute economic problems have been treated and the country is seeing some relief, however, the chronic problems remain.
For example:
The gender pay gap decreased, if barely: In 2015, women earned 80 cents for each dollar earned by men, up a penny from the year before. A woman working full-time in 2015 earned $40,742, a 3 percent bump from 2014, but still $10,000 less than what the median man made.
Incomes increased across the board, but African Americans and Hispanics experienced statistically significant increases.
Real incomes increased 6.1 percent (from $42,540 to $45,148) among Hispanics, 4.4 percent (from $60,325 to $62,950) among non-Hispanic whites, 4.1 percent (from $35,439 to $36,898) among African Americans...
But, before you start cheering and pumping your arms, keep in mind the following: While household incomes rose for the poor and middle class, they rose even more for the rich.
For example, a 5.2 percent income gain netted middle-class families an extra $2,798, while the 3.7 percent gain by the top 5 percent brought those households an additional $7,656 each.