Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

The Policy Racket

Nevada records nation’s biggest percentage drop in wages

Add one more measure to the economic indicators Nevada ranks worst in: biggest drop in wages.

The Senate Joint Economic Committee, a bipartisan group of 20 members of the House and Senate, put out a report Monday about the rising poverty rate nationwide. Their findings, based on census data between 2007 and 2010, focused on comparing household median income over time, and across states.

Nevada’s median income fell the furthest between 2007 and 2010, by 11.9 percent.

It’s a big drop. But it doesn’t mean Nevadans are the poorest, not by a long shot.

Nevada’s median household income in 2010 was $51,001 -- about $1,000 higher than the national average -- and the percentage of its population living in poverty (defined as $22,350 for a four-person household) was 14.9, lower than the national poverty rate of 15.3 percent.

In a state-by-state rate ranking, Nevada sits smack-dab in the middle in measures of poverty: 25th from the bottom and from the top (New York state's poverty rate is also 14.9 percent).

Those middling percentages represent 398,000 people living at or below the poverty line in Nevada, and the bulk of them are children.

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