(Bloomberg) -- Only four US states saw the typical household income decline in 2023 — and two of them are key battlegrounds in this year’s presidential election.
Pennsylvania and Georgia were the two swing states where the median worker made less money than in 2022, after adjusting for inflation, according to the annual American Community Survey published Thursday by the Census Bureau. The other two states to post a drop were Alaska and Delaware. Overall, Americans saw an increase in their real incomes for the first time since 2019, the survey showed.
Georgia was one of three states to see an rise in its Gini index — a widely used measure of income inequality — according to the Census Bureau. Ten states including California and New York saw inequality narrow, while it was unchanged in the rest.
Atlanta and Charlotte in North Carolina (another swing state) were also the only major metro areas where the poverty rate increased last year, the survey found. And Georgia was one of three states to see a significant increase in the share of renters’ incomes that is spent on housing, along with Arizona and Florida.
Nationwide, the annual inflation-adjusted jump in rental costs was the most since at least 2011. About half of America’s 42.5 million renters spent more than 30% of their income on housing last year — the level that the government defines as cost-burdened — according to Census data.
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