Americans are earning more on average than ever before as the poverty rate declines and the U.S. continues to recover from the recession, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But there are still big discrepancies in how much people make, based on their job as well as their age, gender and where they live. Census salary information on 25 million people working full-time in 2011 to 2015 analyzed by MONEY shows discrepancies in how much men and women make to be top earners at their age and in the states they live in. For example, a 45-year-old woman in Arkansas would have to make $49,367 or more a year to be in the top 25% of earners in her category, but if she lived in California, she would have to make $78,306. And while a 60-year-old man would have to make $100,699 to be in the top 25% for his age group in New York, he would have to make $78,043 in Maine.
To let you see how you stack up, MONEY created a tool that allows you to compare your annual salary to others. Select your age, gender and location to give it a try:
Methodology
MONEY examined 25,285,678 records from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey representing all people ages 22 to 65 who were employed and worked at least 35 hours a week in 2011 to 2015. All incomes were adjusted for inflation to 2016 dollars. Values include all sources of income: salaries, investments, inheritances, and so forth. Source: IPUMS-USA, University of Minnesota, www.ipums.org.
