The inflation-adjusted median income of U.S. households rebounded last year to roughly its 2019 level, overcoming the biggest price spike in four decades to restore most Americans’ purchasing power.

The proportion of Americans living in poverty also fell slightly last year, to 11.1%, from 11.5% in 2022. But the ratio of women’s median earnings to men’s widened for the first time in more than two decades as men’s income rose more than women’s in 2023.

By another data point, the Supplemental Poverty Measure rate in 2023 was 12.9%, an increase of 0.5 percentage points from 2022. This accounts for government assistance and geographic differences in cost of living.

The latest data came Tuesday in an annual report from the Census Bureau, which said the median household income, adjusted for inflation, rose 4% to $80,610 in 2023, up from $77,450 in 2022. It was the first increase since 2019, and is essentially unchanged from that year’s figure of $81,210, officials said.

“We are back to that pre-COVID peak that we experienced,” said Liana Fox, assistant division chief in the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division at the Census Bureau.

The data showed that while the typical American household regained its 2019 purchasing power in 2023, it essentially experienced no rise in living standards over that time. That is a sharp difference from the preceding four years, when inflation-adjusted median incomes rose 14% from 2015 through 2019.

The data are based on pre-tax incomes, including Social Security and other benefit programs, though it excludes noncash benefits such as food stamps and Medicaid.

The jump in incomes reflects solid job creation last year, which helped reduce the unemployment rate to a half-century low of 3.4% in April 2023. The proportion of Americans in the so-called prime age group of 25-to-54-year-olds with jobs averaged 80.7% last year, the highest level in 23 years. Economists often focus on prime-age workers because they exclude younger people, who are often still in school, and older workers, who are more likely to retire or reduce their hours.

By racial groups, median household income rose 5.4% for whites to $84,630, increased 2.8% for Black Americans to $56,490 and was unchanged for Hispanics at $65,540. Asian incomes were also largely unchanged at $112,800.

Census also calculated that 92% of Americans had health care in 2023, largely unchanged from the previous year, though the proportion of uninsured children ticked up a half-point to 5.8%.

— Associated Press

Southwest Airlines shakes up leadership

Southwest Airlines’ executive chairman and former CEO Gary Kelly will not seek reelection and six board members will leave their roles amid pressure from activist investor Elliott Investment Management, which has spent months pushing for change at the Dallas-based air carrier.

The changes came as Southwest leaders,including Kelly, met Monday with representatives from Elliott, which took a $1.9 billion stake in June and has pressured the airline to make changes to executive ranks and board members along with other shifts in strategy.

Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, who Elliott had pressured to step aside, will remain even as the company has made major changes to key philosophies that set it apart from other airlines.

Feds relent on ‘Basel III’ rules pushback

After a yearslong war of words, federal regulators on Tuesday watered down an effort to layer new oversight on banks, all but conceding that they had reached too far.

Debate over new rules intended to make the banking industry safer has rumbled for more than a decade. Known as “Basel III endgame,” the rules would have raised the amount of capital banks were required to maintain — funds intended to ensure stability and provide a financial cushion.

The problem, according to bank chiefs and industry lobbyists, was that stricter rules might force them to crimp lending.

The newly proposed rules will largely erase extra rules on banks that have between $100 billion and $250 billion in assets, a category that includes many of the midsize lenders at the center of last year’s banking crisis. They also slash in half the new capital reserve requirements on the largest, so-called systematically important financial institutions.

The modifications to earlier proposals are also intended to treat some types of bank activities, such as modest credit-card balances and loans to pension funds, as relatively safe in the eyes of regulators.

The changes must be jointly agreed upon by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

— From news services