A new Pew study found the median income of Americans decreased as much after the Great Recession as it did during the recession. In 2009, when the Great Recession ended, median household income was $52,195 (in 2011 dollars).  In 2011, two years after the Great Recession, the median household income was $50,054, which is a 4.1% decrease in the two years since the recession. 

“Much like an unwelcome dinner guest who does not know when it is time to leave, the Great Recession seems blissfully unaware that it was declared over in June 2009,” the report stated. 

During the recession, from 2007 to 2009, the median household income decreased from $54,489 in 2007 to $52,195 in 2009, which was a 4.2% loss. 

The report noted that the current so-called “recovery” is the most negative for household income during any post-recession period in the past four decades” and “the lackluster results on household income are symptomatic of broader struggles in the economic well-being of U.S. households.”

The report also found that the poverty rate has also risen in the two years after the Great Recession supposedly ended and a key “financial burden on households is the nosedive in their wealth (value of assets owned minus outstanding value of debt) due to the recession.”