Incomes rise for bottom 99 percent of U.S. families

Incomes rise for bottom 99 percent of U.S. families

by Christopher Rugaber at the Columbus Dispatch

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2015/06/30/incomes-rise-for-bottom-99-percent-of-u-s--families.html

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WASHINGTON — Solid job growth is finally boosting paychecks for the rest of us.

Incomes for the bottom 99 percent of American families rose 3.3 percent last year, to $47,213, the biggest annual gain in the past 15 years, according to data compiled by economist Emmanuel Saez and released on Monday by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.

“For the bottom 99 percent of income earners, this marks the first year of real recovery from the income losses sparked by the Great Recession,” Saez, a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said in a summary of his findings.

The increase probably reflects robust hiring last year, when employers added 3.1 million jobs, the most since 1999. That lowered the unemployment rate to 5.6 percent; it had been 6.7 percent a year earlier.



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