Released October 21, 2009

RALEIGH, N.C. - Each year the Census Bureau releases a massive volume on the latest trends in income for the country. The 2009 report just came out.

Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Economists like me eagerly anticipate this. It's sort of like a Christmas present in the summer because there's so much good data. This report that just came out is for 2008.

This is important because this is the first year of the recession. And as expected, we found that earnings went down for workers. In fact, they went down 1 percent for men. They went down 2 percent for women.

Annual earnings fell for households in all income categories, but actually more so for middle income households than for either lower income or upper income households. A measure of income inequality did rise slightly in 2008 compared to 2007, but it was actually lower than what it had been in 2005 and 2006. And also the poverty rate nationwide did go up. Again, this is not unexpected, due to the recession.

Nationwide, the poverty rate in 2007 was 12.5 percent. It rose to 13.2 percent in 2008. These are all numbers we would expect to see during a recession. We hope they will get better in the next few years."

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http://www.ncsu.edu/project/calscommblogs/news/archives/2009/10/economic_perspe_473.html