Income in the United States: 2023

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Income in the United States: 2023

Introduction

This report presents estimates on income, earnings, and inequality in the United States for calendar year 2023, based on information collected in the 2024 and earlier Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplements (CPS ASEC) conducted by the Census Bureau.

The income estimates in the main sections of this report are based on the concept of money income, which is pretax and does not account for the value of in-kind transfers. Appendix A provides a detailed explanation of how income is measured using the CPS ASEC. Estimates of post-tax income and inequality are included in Appendix B.

Highlights

• Real median household income was $80,610 in 2023, a 4.0 percent increase from the 2022 estimate of $77,540 (Figure 1 and Table A-1). This is the first statistically significant annual increase in real median household income since 2019.
• Real median household incomes increased by 5.4 percent for White households and by 5.7 percent for non-Hispanic White households between 2022 and 2023. There was no significant change in median incomes for Black, Asian, and Hispanic households (Figure 2 and Table A-1).
• Household income rose throughout the income distribution, increasing 6.7 percent at the 10th percentile and 4.6 percent at the 90th percentile (Table A-3).
• Income inequality as measured by the Gini index and income percentile ratios was not significantly different between 2022 and 2023 (Figure 3 and Table A-3).
• Between 2022 and 2023, the number of total workers increased by 2.2 million, or 1.3 percent. The change in the number of full-time, year-round workers was not statistically significant (Figure 5 and Table A-6).
• Real median earnings for men who worked full-time, year-round increased by 3.0 percent, and real median earnings increased 1.5 percent for women who worked full-time, year-round (Figure 4 and Table A-6).
• For full-time, year-round workers, the female-to-male earnings ratio in 2023 fell to 82.7 percent from 84.0 percent in 2022 (Figure 6 and Table A-6). This is the first statistically significant annual decrease in the female-to-male earnings ratio since 2003.

Tables

Figures

For More Information

To adjust for changes in the cost of living over time, historical income and earnings estimates in this report are expressed in real or 2023 dollars. The current method for inflation-adjustment is based on the Chained Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers (C-CPI-U) between 2000 and 2023 and the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers Retroactive Series (R-CPI-U-RS) prior to 2000. More information on the inflation adjustment and the annual index values are available in Appendix A.

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