🤑 Americans Are Making More Money Than Ever Before

What We’re Showing:

This chart tracks the share of American households by income bracket from 1967 to 2023.

ℹ️ All income is in 2023 dollars, adjusted for inflation, but not for cost of living differences. 

Data is sourced from the Census Bureau, published 2024.

Key Takeaways

Incomes for American households have grown quite a bit in the last six decades.

In 1967, nearly one-third of households made less than $35,000 a year (adjusted to 2023 dollars), and in 2023, that’s fallen to one-fifth.

And the opposite is true for the other end of the spectrum.

In ‘67, less than 2% of American households made more than $200K a year. In 2023, that number has risen to more than one-in-ten.

What This Chart Doesn’t Tell Us

Of course looking at incomes is only one half of the story.

It doesn’t account for how prices of goods and services have changed relative to growing incomes.

Houses for example cost about 3x the median income in 1967, and in 2022 cost more than 6x the median income.