Neil Irwin of the NYT notes -
“The median
American household in 2014 had a lower income, in inflation-adjusted terms,
than it did in 2013. The $53,657 the household in the middle of the income
distribution earned last year was down 1.5 percent from the year before, though
the census said that shift was not statistically significant.
But even if that
drop is a statistical blip and you assume that middle-class incomes were really
flat, flat isn’t anything to celebrate in the current environment. The 2014
real median income number is 6.5 percent below its 2007, pre-crisis level. It
is 7.2 percent below the number in 1999.”