What shocked me the most is that they say the average income per household is $62,000. I am apparently in the wrong city because in my town, the average is closer to half of that. =(
What shocks me is that CNN would use a nonsensical statistic like "average income" at all. They should have used "median" income.
The old story is that four men each making $50,000 are on a bus. Bill Gates gets on and the average income goes up to $2 million. The median income, however, is still $50,000.
62K per family/yr is pretty poor in S.Ca. Especially w/all the taxes.
Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010Sept. 13, 2011
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2010, median household income declined
Real median household income in the United States in 2010 was $49,445, a 2.3 percent decline from the 2009 median.
Since 2007, the year before the most recent recession, real median household income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the median household income peak that occurred prior to the 2001 recession in 1999.