BUFFALO’S BUSINESS
Incomes here are up, but still lag U. S.
Updated: 08/31/08 6:19 AM
Here’s something to brighten your Labor Day: You were quite a bit better off last year than you were in 2006.
The U. S. Census Bureau reported last week that median household incomes in the Buffalo Niagara region grew by 4.7 percent in 2007, which was more than three times faster than the 1.3 percent national average.
Even so, it’s hardly a cakewalk for workers here, because we’re a lot poorer than most Americans. The region’s median household income of $44,843 is almost 12 percent lower than the nationwide median of $50,740.
Even among our upstate neighbors, the Buffalo Niagara region stands out as a relative poorhouse. Median incomes in Albany are more than $10,000 higher, easily topping the national average, while they’re $5,650 more in Rochester and more than $3,750 higher in Syracuse than they are here.
The Buffalo Niagara region is being squeezed on both ends of the income spectrum. While we’re roughly on par with the rest of the country in the lower end of the middle-income range, we have 17 percent more households with low incomes and almost a third fewer households earning high incomes.
For instance, 28 percent of the households here have median incomes of $25,000 or less, compared with 24 percent nationally. And just 9.1 percent of the households here have median incomes of $125,000 or more, compared with 12.1 percent nationally.
Even the region’s wealthiest households lag the rest of the country. The top 5 percent of households here earn an average of $263,000, 15 percent less than the $311,400 national average.
Yet among households with incomes between $25,000 and $75,000, we’re right in step with the national average of just below 45 percent.
The unfortunate reality is that times have been pretty tough on the working class folks for a while. On a national basis, the rich are getting richer, while the rest of us struggle.
“Labor Day 2008 finds New York workers facing a shrinking economy and falling real wages, as inflation rises to levels not seen in 17 years,” says James Parrott, the deputy director and chief economist for the Albany-based Fiscal Policy Institute and the author of a new study on the rise in unemployment statewide.
That’s bad news for a New York work force that, for the most part, is working harder, smarter and more efficiently than ever before.
Nationally, the median earnings for full-time male workers today are a smidge less than they were in 1972. The only reason the overall median earnings figure is up is that full-time women have made considerable strides in narrowing the still-yawning wage gap with their male counterparts.
The long-term trends haven’t been favorable for most workers. Median household incomes last year were almost 2 percent lower than they were in 2000, the product of slow wage growth, declining manufacturing and fewer hours worked, according to an updated report on “The State of Working America” released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D. C., think tank.
While productivity has soared, much of the benefits have gone to the richest of the rich, which rightly includes the investors who provided the money for the new equipment and technology that helped make workers more productive. From 1989 to 2007, a typical worker’s income grew just 10 percent, but it tripled for the richest 1 percent of Americans.
“While most Americans were struggling, the good times were rolling among the top 10 percent” of the highest-income households, notes economist Lawrence Mishel, the Economic Policy Institute’s president and a co-author of the study.
