September 13, 2016

Chart of the Day #1: Household Income Rises Sharply in 2015

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I’ve got good news and bad news for you today. First the good news:

Median household income was $56,516 in 2015, a 5.2 percent increase from the 2014 median in real terms….

And now, continuing directly, the bad news:

….but 1.6 percent lower than the median in 2007, the year before the most recent recession, and 2.4 percent lower than the median household income peak that occurred in 1999.

This comes from the latest Census report on income and poverty. It shows that income really is making a strong recovery as the labor market tightens. But it also shows that we still have a ways to go before we make up for the losses of the Great Recession.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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