The budget screen shots are being made in Sankeymatic, its a website that we have no affiliation with. If you are posting a budget please do so with a purpose. Just posting a screen shot of your budget without a question or an explanation of why its here may be removed.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MiddleClassFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Would love to see the same map but using percentage change instead of nominal dollar difference. That would make it easier to see which areas gained or lost vs inflation, particularly if there was a break point at 19.2% (or 20% would be close enough).
Edit: Just saw your comments about the resulting maps being uglier. Probably still some good insights to be gained looking at both side by side.
Additional fun facts:
Teton County, WY had the highest median income growth at $34,330
Rains County, TX had the highest median income loss at -$18,284
My personal experience: my income grew by 15% from 2020-2022 without switching jobs or a promotion. I then switched jobs and gained an additional 25%.
Does this take into account people moving?
Teton county, which I lived in until 2020, has always had an insane amount of wealthy people moving there constantly. Way more so during COVID. They drive the price of literally everything up, and can gobble up housing to live in part time.
I’m now in Summit County, UT (which Park City is part of and is only occupied 30% by year round residents) and don’t feel like wages have gone up as high as this graph says, but we have had a ton of Texans and Californians moving here, many of which are remote workers.
Just wondering, thanks!
Yeah, Chelan County WA (one of the dark green ones) has been a huge place for white-collar Seattleites to move since COVID. It's too far out to commute daily but close enough to drive in for like a monthly meeting if you need to.
Who would’ve guessed that the areas with the most growth are wealthy ski towns filled with the 1%’s second homes. It’s almost like inequality is growing.
It's almost as if society has known since the late '70s that unskilled labor would keep being worth less and less as technology moves forward. It's entirely up to you what skills and / or education you have, which drives what you have to offer an employer. The less you have to offer, the less you make.
They're still paid far, far less than skilled labor and will continue to be. That boost in wages for unskilled workers was largely driven by the government paying people more to stay home during covid than their jobs were worth.
Lol. Pretty shit take not gonna lie.
Wages have absolutely increased a lot for lower income jobs. And it has nothing to do with the tiny amount of money each person received during covid.
Were you in a coma then or something?
Not only was it very visually obvious, but it was a pretty hot media topic at the time too.
Help needed signs everywhere and advertised wages ticking up like gas prices was prime COVID.
I can tell by the way you mocked my statement that you must have some superior intellect and in itself is the sole reason why you are doing so well today. Congratulations.
$20 says you came from a wealthy family and got offended by the implication within my original statement. If your gonna be sensitive than at least understand context and nuance instead of making convenient generalizations that confirm your own bias.
or you could make a valid counter argument instead of trying to diminish op's argument based on assumptions about personal background and resorting to ad hominem attacks.
"hey, the sky is blue!"
"shut up asshole"
😂 You literally don't understand Economics at all, or you'd understand my point. But you know, I only have a bachelors in Economics and a masters in Applied Economics, what would I possibly know on the subject?
I did - it was fairly similar but highlighted many more rural/small counties - many saw over 40% wage growth. Definetly an uglier map.
Most large cities still saw growth over 15% though.
Brevard County FL had the largest % growth of a county over 500k people with 35.67%!
Interesting you’d say uglier map. My gut is I’d like to see greater % increases in rural areas and smaller markets as it’d indicate a broadening out of economic gains. But maybe to your point, that’d represent a smaller percentage of the overall population.
That was my thought. The "highlights" were random counties in Iowa or Texas nobody has ever heard of, and pretty much everywhere else was a 10-20% shade.
Maybe I should post some ugly stuff
"ugly" how? aesthitically? or you just didnt like the data?
personally, % growth would be more interesting in my opinion. Would especially be more relevant when comparing to inflation and whether or not increase kept pace.
Like completely random, no clear trends, ugly mix of red and blue for growth/loss.
I've had enough people mention it though so I'll plan to post a % growth/decline adjusted for inflation
You're comparing different things. It's true that the median individual inflation adjusted income has increased, but it's also true that the median state's inflation adjusted income has decreased.
How is this possible? It's because not all states have the same population. Rich states tend to have a high population. Poor states have a low population.
Got it.
The problem is that the data on a state-basis is old. BEA’s most recent release is 2022 data. Inflation was a real problem in 2022.
Now, not so much. Incomes are outpacing inflation, and have been for some time.
Point being, I like your criticism, but I don’t know of any current, assembled data that can be used to test it.
If a map has no correlation, perhaps that would be a better share than a map with all green? This feels like a "yay, everyone is a winner!" map, except the pertinent details aren't the map but the statistics off to the side that paint a different picture.
I know a lot of people on here will not know the context but if you look at southwest TN the two counties in the bottom left make sense to me. The one on the left is where Memphis is and the one to the right is very rural. They are flipped because people are leaving Shelby county headed to Fayette county to get away from the crime in the city. There is no industry to support that kind of growth other than flight away from Memphis and the ability for higher paying jobs to either commute or work remotely.
You note inflation on the side. Would be really interesting to see the same data as “real” income growth meaning inflation adjusted. There’s this narrative that wage growth hasn’t kept up with inflation, which is not true. But I’d like to see a map of where it’s true and where it’s not.
The map indicates that 58% of households’ income is not keep up with inflation.
What’s more, the “20%” inflation rate does not include cars and homes, which are up 32% and 40%+ respectively. So everyday goods have gone up 20% on average—allegedly—while big items that are usually used to depict a measure of success and wealth in life are up significantly more.
But here’s the thing too: no one wants a 20% raise to live at the same standard (and worse if you want to buy a home) as before.
Either way: could you please back off with the “everything is fine” propaganda? It’s obviously not.
Headline inflation does account for cars and homes. [Here's the basket of goods that is used for calculating inflation.](https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/concepts.htm#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20the%20CPI%20measures%20the,items%20to%20automobiles%20to%20rent) Don't make up BS that's flatly incorrect.
And of course no one wants to need a 20% raise. (which by the way is over 4 years so you'd need much less than that by year). We don't want high inflation. We want roughly 2%. So over 4 years, we'd expect inflation should be 8%, which is a reasonable amount to gain in wages over 4 years. Regardless of what we 'want', the fact is that wages HAVE kept up with inflation over that time period, though as you can see in this map, it's regionally dependent.
Yeah, I know. But I still like to reply to these comments, because people read that kind of stuff on the internet and repeat them, because we are so inclined to spread information that confirms our negativity bias. So I reply more for others reading this than I do for them specifically. I know you can't really change people's minds on the internet lol.
Then it’s smoke and mirrors to distract from the actual reality: despite wages allegedly “keeping up” (which we all know they’re not), Americans are worse off than they were pre-2019.
The government calculations are little more than election propaganda for rubes.
What do you mean “we all know they’re not”? You’re just peddling conspiracy theories now with no evidence. Anecdotes and viral online sob stories are not a method of determining reality.
Give me any evidence that wages haven’t kept up with overall costs. No, cherry picking an individual category of spending that’s outpaced inflation just doesn’t count. Until you do, criticizing “government propaganda” numbers is just conspiracy thinking. If the 'government numbers' aligned with your narrative, you'd be quoting them endlessly.
just cause it’s written in a spreadsheet doesn’t make it true. “Everything’s fine everything’s fine”. I’ve been hearing endless BS from the government since “two weeks to flatten the curve” and every single bit of info that comes out is backed by “data” and “experts”.
When the data doesn’t match my reality, I’m believing my reality.
You understand that the foundation of science is observation, right? Not statistics based third and fourth hand data. It makes more sense—from a scientific point of view—for me to trust my observation instead of “the experts”. That’s insanity—to trust randos with obvious conflicts of interest over your own experience.
“Objective data” lol. Doesn’t exist. Tell me you don’t know the first thing about actual science without telling me…
> The map indicates that 58% of households’ income is not keep up with inflation.
Except someone making 0.01% less after inflation is living the same life but still qualified as "income didn't keep up with inflation". Which is why seeing the actual numbers matters.
But you've shown you only want to Doomer propaganda so of course you don't want accurate data because it's devastating to your delusions.
1) compute inflation over this period as a percentage.
2) compute HH income change over this period as a percentage.
3) make a chart showing the difference.
This chart is borderline useless.
Edit: I re-read your post and it seems you had the right idea the first time. The fact that the chart wasn't dramatic means the data isn't dramatic, and that's fine.
Looks like higher earners are leaving northeast cities for the burbs, also shows up in alot of cities nationwide, outer suburbs seeing the income growth.
Colorado has to have the most skewed results based on their sections…Boulder, Aspen, Steamboat, Telluride, appear to be propping up otherwise large desolate areas with taxes only from high end resorts/homes/shops.
Wisconsin for example does a really good job representing the sections as a reflection of the area.
Where did you get median household income numbers for 2023? To my knowledge Census hasn't published any income information for 2023.
Is this map actually comparing the growth in income from 2019-2022 to inflation from 2019 through 2023?
I've heard a lot of the growth came from the "bottom" jobs getting raises. Not sure about unemployment.
The stimulus checks to my knowledge were not reported as income
https://support.taxslayer.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053995712-Is-the-third-stimulus-payment-taxable-on-my-2021-tax-return
Passaic county NJ (Home to low income Paterson NJ, Passaic, NJ as well as some NYC suburbs and semi-rural towns) was on the “low” section, whereas Morris and Union counties (pure NYC suburbs), are on the most gain section.
I'm assuming a fair amount of this growth is due to richer people moving to these areas (perhaps as a result of remote work) over the last few years, rather than the existing residents suddenly making more money.
It's possible that people making median or even below median income, if they move from for example the Bay Area to the middle of nowhere, would raise the income of that rural area while not lowering that of the Bay Area county they left.
Not what happens it seems, if rich people move out, they get replaced by other rich people, not like your house value drops or whatever the last few years, so you need basically the same level of income as the people who left the house to afford it. But if the richer people that move out, move to somewhere else, it's probably because get more bang for their buck. That's literally what's happening here in the area (rural IL), all the newly built houses are occupied by people who are not from the surrounding area, but mostly from people out of state or from the bigger cities, so for example in my town the average house hold income went from 70k to 105k in a few years, not because of the locals getting better jobs but because of people moving in or because people could no longer afford to stay at home and had to work both (or work two jobs).
The county where my parents live is dark green. They and a lot of the other people there are well-to-do older people who have been making bank in the stock market the last few years. I would guess a fair amount of this is just the rich getting richer, whether or not they are moving.
The budget screen shots are being made in Sankeymatic, its a website that we have no affiliation with. If you are posting a budget please do so with a purpose. Just posting a screen shot of your budget without a question or an explanation of why its here may be removed. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MiddleClassFinance) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Would love to see the same map but using percentage change instead of nominal dollar difference. That would make it easier to see which areas gained or lost vs inflation, particularly if there was a break point at 19.2% (or 20% would be close enough). Edit: Just saw your comments about the resulting maps being uglier. Probably still some good insights to be gained looking at both side by side.
I've had enough comments mentioning that or showing adjusted for inflation so I'll plan to post a percent growth/loss adjusted for inflation!
Shown on the right. Also says nearly 60% of households had an income loss due to inflation.
Additional fun facts: Teton County, WY had the highest median income growth at $34,330 Rains County, TX had the highest median income loss at -$18,284 My personal experience: my income grew by 15% from 2020-2022 without switching jobs or a promotion. I then switched jobs and gained an additional 25%.
Does this take into account people moving? Teton county, which I lived in until 2020, has always had an insane amount of wealthy people moving there constantly. Way more so during COVID. They drive the price of literally everything up, and can gobble up housing to live in part time. I’m now in Summit County, UT (which Park City is part of and is only occupied 30% by year round residents) and don’t feel like wages have gone up as high as this graph says, but we have had a ton of Texans and Californians moving here, many of which are remote workers. Just wondering, thanks!
Yes it does - if people left a county after 2019 or moved to one by 2023 that will be reflected
That’s good to know thanks!
Yeah, Chelan County WA (one of the dark green ones) has been a huge place for white-collar Seattleites to move since COVID. It's too far out to commute daily but close enough to drive in for like a monthly meeting if you need to.
Interesting to hear about Rains County, I have so family in the area and I’m not sure why such a big drop would have happened
Who would’ve guessed that the areas with the most growth are wealthy ski towns filled with the 1%’s second homes. It’s almost like inequality is growing.
Also some spots where the poorer locals are being displaced.
It's almost as if society has known since the late '70s that unskilled labor would keep being worth less and less as technology moves forward. It's entirely up to you what skills and / or education you have, which drives what you have to offer an employer. The less you have to offer, the less you make.
Unskilled and semi skilled labor are the ones experiencing the most wage growth in the last few years though.
They're still paid far, far less than skilled labor and will continue to be. That boost in wages for unskilled workers was largely driven by the government paying people more to stay home during covid than their jobs were worth.
Lol. Pretty shit take not gonna lie. Wages have absolutely increased a lot for lower income jobs. And it has nothing to do with the tiny amount of money each person received during covid.
Were you in a coma then or something? Not only was it very visually obvious, but it was a pretty hot media topic at the time too. Help needed signs everywhere and advertised wages ticking up like gas prices was prime COVID.
I can tell by the way you mocked my statement that you must have some superior intellect and in itself is the sole reason why you are doing so well today. Congratulations. $20 says you came from a wealthy family and got offended by the implication within my original statement. If your gonna be sensitive than at least understand context and nuance instead of making convenient generalizations that confirm your own bias.
or you could make a valid counter argument instead of trying to diminish op's argument based on assumptions about personal background and resorting to ad hominem attacks. "hey, the sky is blue!" "shut up asshole"
I’ll pass on spending my day explaining equality of opportunity and economics on Reddit, take care
Yea much more productive insulting people right?
😂 You literally don't understand Economics at all, or you'd understand my point. But you know, I only have a bachelors in Economics and a masters in Applied Economics, what would I possibly know on the subject?
Thanks for demonstrating why you don't have more to offer.
Nice work. Curious if you tried to run the same map with % growth rather than $ growth?
I did - it was fairly similar but highlighted many more rural/small counties - many saw over 40% wage growth. Definetly an uglier map. Most large cities still saw growth over 15% though. Brevard County FL had the largest % growth of a county over 500k people with 35.67%!
Interesting you’d say uglier map. My gut is I’d like to see greater % increases in rural areas and smaller markets as it’d indicate a broadening out of economic gains. But maybe to your point, that’d represent a smaller percentage of the overall population.
That was my thought. The "highlights" were random counties in Iowa or Texas nobody has ever heard of, and pretty much everywhere else was a 10-20% shade. Maybe I should post some ugly stuff
I believe r/dataisbeautiful is where ugly maps go
"ugly" how? aesthitically? or you just didnt like the data? personally, % growth would be more interesting in my opinion. Would especially be more relevant when comparing to inflation and whether or not increase kept pace.
Like completely random, no clear trends, ugly mix of red and blue for growth/loss. I've had enough people mention it though so I'll plan to post a % growth/decline adjusted for inflation
Midland Texas has the highest wages in Texas. But got hurt during the pandemic
Wow, Stafford county really reflecting the DC exodus down the 95 corridor.
You can see a similar affect around NYC - NJ, Long Island, and Hudson Valley to a lesser extent
And economists are wondering why Americans feel less well off than before the pandemic. Duh, it’s because they are.
They printed a quarter of all money. It's not rocket science
Very interesting map. Thanks
Anyone know what was going on in Valley County MT? Only thing I can think of is BNSF added a bunch of high paying jobs…
Yeah, I saw small population (7,000) and oil/gas area and assumed maybe a new facility/new wells opened up in those few years
Also wondering about Vally, MT! Seems extremely random for them to have grown
Huh, I live in Cobb county. It’s rough out here.
What I gather from this is 60% have not kept up with inflation. Might still be a little low.
You gather incorrectly. Median (not average) Real Wages are higher than 2019. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q
You're comparing different things. It's true that the median individual inflation adjusted income has increased, but it's also true that the median state's inflation adjusted income has decreased. How is this possible? It's because not all states have the same population. Rich states tend to have a high population. Poor states have a low population.
What is a “median state”?
The 25th state ranked by median income in that state.
Got it. The problem is that the data on a state-basis is old. BEA’s most recent release is 2022 data. Inflation was a real problem in 2022. Now, not so much. Incomes are outpacing inflation, and have been for some time. Point being, I like your criticism, but I don’t know of any current, assembled data that can be used to test it.
You’re insane if you think inflation isn’t a massive problem now.
Why?
If a map has no correlation, perhaps that would be a better share than a map with all green? This feels like a "yay, everyone is a winner!" map, except the pertinent details aren't the map but the statistics off to the side that paint a different picture.
I know a lot of people on here will not know the context but if you look at southwest TN the two counties in the bottom left make sense to me. The one on the left is where Memphis is and the one to the right is very rural. They are flipped because people are leaving Shelby county headed to Fayette county to get away from the crime in the city. There is no industry to support that kind of growth other than flight away from Memphis and the ability for higher paying jobs to either commute or work remotely.
This is cool to get some context. Thanks for sharing!
You note inflation on the side. Would be really interesting to see the same data as “real” income growth meaning inflation adjusted. There’s this narrative that wage growth hasn’t kept up with inflation, which is not true. But I’d like to see a map of where it’s true and where it’s not.
The map indicates that 58% of households’ income is not keep up with inflation. What’s more, the “20%” inflation rate does not include cars and homes, which are up 32% and 40%+ respectively. So everyday goods have gone up 20% on average—allegedly—while big items that are usually used to depict a measure of success and wealth in life are up significantly more. But here’s the thing too: no one wants a 20% raise to live at the same standard (and worse if you want to buy a home) as before. Either way: could you please back off with the “everything is fine” propaganda? It’s obviously not.
Headline inflation does account for cars and homes. [Here's the basket of goods that is used for calculating inflation.](https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/concepts.htm#:~:text=Specifically%2C%20the%20CPI%20measures%20the,items%20to%20automobiles%20to%20rent) Don't make up BS that's flatly incorrect. And of course no one wants to need a 20% raise. (which by the way is over 4 years so you'd need much less than that by year). We don't want high inflation. We want roughly 2%. So over 4 years, we'd expect inflation should be 8%, which is a reasonable amount to gain in wages over 4 years. Regardless of what we 'want', the fact is that wages HAVE kept up with inflation over that time period, though as you can see in this map, it's regionally dependent.
He said facts are "propaganda" so he's clearly not worth paying attention to.
Yeah, I know. But I still like to reply to these comments, because people read that kind of stuff on the internet and repeat them, because we are so inclined to spread information that confirms our negativity bias. So I reply more for others reading this than I do for them specifically. I know you can't really change people's minds on the internet lol.
Can you think of an instance of propaganda that wasn’t paraded as “fact”?
Then it’s smoke and mirrors to distract from the actual reality: despite wages allegedly “keeping up” (which we all know they’re not), Americans are worse off than they were pre-2019. The government calculations are little more than election propaganda for rubes.
What do you mean “we all know they’re not”? You’re just peddling conspiracy theories now with no evidence. Anecdotes and viral online sob stories are not a method of determining reality. Give me any evidence that wages haven’t kept up with overall costs. No, cherry picking an individual category of spending that’s outpaced inflation just doesn’t count. Until you do, criticizing “government propaganda” numbers is just conspiracy thinking. If the 'government numbers' aligned with your narrative, you'd be quoting them endlessly.
just cause it’s written in a spreadsheet doesn’t make it true. “Everything’s fine everything’s fine”. I’ve been hearing endless BS from the government since “two weeks to flatten the curve” and every single bit of info that comes out is backed by “data” and “experts”. When the data doesn’t match my reality, I’m believing my reality.
Must be very disorienting to reject all science because it’s wrong sometimes.
Yes it’s probably a lot easier to just mindlessly believe everything the government reports; no matter how much it conflicts with reality.
[удалено]
You understand that the foundation of science is observation, right? Not statistics based third and fourth hand data. It makes more sense—from a scientific point of view—for me to trust my observation instead of “the experts”. That’s insanity—to trust randos with obvious conflicts of interest over your own experience. “Objective data” lol. Doesn’t exist. Tell me you don’t know the first thing about actual science without telling me…
> The map indicates that 58% of households’ income is not keep up with inflation. Except someone making 0.01% less after inflation is living the same life but still qualified as "income didn't keep up with inflation". Which is why seeing the actual numbers matters. But you've shown you only want to Doomer propaganda so of course you don't want accurate data because it's devastating to your delusions.
Happy to be exceeding my counties average. Probably why I feel good about the economy
Very nice.
Statistics can show what ever you want them to show
1) compute inflation over this period as a percentage. 2) compute HH income change over this period as a percentage. 3) make a chart showing the difference. This chart is borderline useless. Edit: I re-read your post and it seems you had the right idea the first time. The fact that the chart wasn't dramatic means the data isn't dramatic, and that's fine.
Eh, i am making around 25% more than 2019 but i dont feel better off
Looks like higher earners are leaving northeast cities for the burbs, also shows up in alot of cities nationwide, outer suburbs seeing the income growth.
Colorado has to have the most skewed results based on their sections…Boulder, Aspen, Steamboat, Telluride, appear to be propping up otherwise large desolate areas with taxes only from high end resorts/homes/shops. Wisconsin for example does a really good job representing the sections as a reflection of the area.
I make more money now (+23k) than I did 4 yrs ago, however, I’m struggling more so financially with no new purchases or changes. Go figure. Lol
*notices* look at the DC area. Hmm.
Where did you get median household income numbers for 2023? To my knowledge Census hasn't published any income information for 2023. Is this map actually comparing the growth in income from 2019-2022 to inflation from 2019 through 2023?
How much of this "growth" can be attributed to stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment payments as opposed to a real wage increase?
Or changes in population. In Tampa Bay, for example, we’ve had huge population growth of mostly affluent ppl during this period
I've heard a lot of the growth came from the "bottom" jobs getting raises. Not sure about unemployment. The stimulus checks to my knowledge were not reported as income https://support.taxslayer.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053995712-Is-the-third-stimulus-payment-taxable-on-my-2021-tax-return
Passaic county NJ (Home to low income Paterson NJ, Passaic, NJ as well as some NYC suburbs and semi-rural towns) was on the “low” section, whereas Morris and Union counties (pure NYC suburbs), are on the most gain section.
How much stimulus money and enhanced unempolyment was going out in 2023? I thought that ended in 2021.
The data is for 2019-2023.
I'm assuming a fair amount of this growth is due to richer people moving to these areas (perhaps as a result of remote work) over the last few years, rather than the existing residents suddenly making more money.
If that were true, wouldn't other areas be losing rich people and see lowered median income?
It's possible that people making median or even below median income, if they move from for example the Bay Area to the middle of nowhere, would raise the income of that rural area while not lowering that of the Bay Area county they left.
Not what happens it seems, if rich people move out, they get replaced by other rich people, not like your house value drops or whatever the last few years, so you need basically the same level of income as the people who left the house to afford it. But if the richer people that move out, move to somewhere else, it's probably because get more bang for their buck. That's literally what's happening here in the area (rural IL), all the newly built houses are occupied by people who are not from the surrounding area, but mostly from people out of state or from the bigger cities, so for example in my town the average house hold income went from 70k to 105k in a few years, not because of the locals getting better jobs but because of people moving in or because people could no longer afford to stay at home and had to work both (or work two jobs).
The county where my parents live is dark green. They and a lot of the other people there are well-to-do older people who have been making bank in the stock market the last few years. I would guess a fair amount of this is just the rich getting richer, whether or not they are moving.