Americans got raise last year for first time since 2007

“The federal government invests billions of dollars each year in programs to help low-income Americans – but more than 43 million people continue to live in poverty“, Brady said.

U.S. median household income saw the first annual increase in 2015 since the Great Recession, said the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday.

Last year’s median household income in real terms was $56,500 – nearly $3,000 higher than the year before.

In order to rectify this, a new version of a poverty risk calculator is being released today that allows Americans for the first time to estimate what their personal risk of poverty will be in the years ahead.

In addition, the poverty rate past year declined to 13.5 percent, a 1.2 percentage point decrease since 2014. That was still slightly higher than in 2008 and up from 11.3% in 2000.

Several measures had suggested that 2015 was strong for wage growth. “We’re climbing out of a deep hole”.

Trudi Renwick, an assistant division chief at Census Bureau, said in a conference call with reporters it was striking that median household income rose across the board.

The poverty rate is down and median household income is up according to a positive new Census Bureau report.

The share of food-insecure households was 12.7 percent past year, down from 14 percent in 2014.

Metro areas saw real median household incomes surge, while non-metro areas did not. At the same time, the poverty rate declined by 1.2 percent and the percentage of Americans with health insurance increased. That’s down from 10.4 per cent, or 33 million in 2014.

“The highest income growth was in the bottom fifth” of workers, said Lawrence Mishel, president of the liberal Economic Policy Institute think tank, “which is very welcome news”. The poverty rate decreased for all three major groups.

The uninsured rate has dropped as millions of Americans gained coverage under Obamacare.

In another encouraging sign, the number of residents without health insurance dropped to 29 million previous year from 33 million in 2014. That’s down from the 19.1 percent uninsured rate seen in 2014 and the 22 percent uninsured rate recorded in 2013. Rising pay also lifted the poorest households, cutting poverty by the sharpest amount in almost a half-century. The data will also detail how different gender, ethnic and income groups are faring in the economy.