It’s easy to see famous people on TV or social media talking about how much money they make, the cars they own, the vacations they take, and so on. Rest assured all is not always quite like it seems with those folks, but it’s a legit question to wonder how our income stacks up against, well…everyone else. If this is a question you’ve pondered, then we’ve got just the thing for you!
As with anything economists do, there are multiple metrics that you can look at (and often there are even different ways of calculating the same metric), but here are a few of the main ones to pay attention to.
Here are Five Fast Facts on salaries in America:
- 🙂 The Average - The national average household income for all full time workers across all industries at the end of 2022 was around $106k. Not too shabby!
- 💲 The Median - The national median household income – meaning if you lined up all household incomes from smallest to largest and picked the one in the middle – was just under $75k. Much like Jim Cramer’s blood pressure, the average skews things upward.
- 🌎 The Per Capita - There’s also this funny metric called “per capita” income, which is basically the amount of money a person earns in a certain geographic area. It’s a way to capture income more specific to a location to help even out the differences between, say, New York City and a small rural town in Mississippi. It also counts each person rather than just households, so that helps level things out, too. In the 2020 census, the national per capita income was around $39k.
- 📈 Approaching The Top - If you want to be close to the top of the pile but are content to not be “rich,” then how much do you need to earn? Your target is around $168k. For the top 5% you need to get to around $336k.
- 💸 Livin’ Large - If that rarified air at the very tip top of the income pyramid is your goal, you’ll need to find some way to rake in a Paycheck of over $800k! The top 0.1% is a cool $3.3M, in case you were wondering. Yep, those are the folks that skew the average upward (how nice for them!)
🔥Bottom line: We can’t all be a Rockefeller, a Gates, or a Musk. But that’s okay. The main thing is to get a Paycheck that works for you in your situation, and live the best life you can. It’s nice to take a look around every now and then to see how you’re doing…but we suggest not getting too hung up on it. No matter where you are on the pyramid, there’s always someone with more.
What do you think is the best way to find contentment with your income?
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