Conn.’s income growth behind N.Y., N.J., data show

American households are back to making what they were before the Great Recession, but statewide figures highlight how neighboring states continue outpace Connecticut in the recovery, according to figures released this week by the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to the bureau, half of U.S. households annually make more than $61,372, and half less — a 1.8 percent increase over 2016. State numbers, which come from a separate data set, show Connecticut grew 1 percent from 2016 to 2017, far behind neighbors New York and New Jersey, which respectively jumped 3.2 percent and 5.2 percent.

Income measures in Connecticut’s largest cities varied widely and changed dramatically in the last year. Danbury, for example, saw its income measure drop nearly $4,600, while New Haven saw a $4,000 jump.

Stamford again took home the highest median income among large cities with $87,300 a household, far above the statewide median of $74,200. Norwalk came in second with $70,000, and Danbury’s households took in $65,600.

New Haven and Bridgeport both sat around $45,000 median household pay last year.

It’s important to note though that a wide margin of error in the local figures can often account for the swings, and year-over-year changes are sometimes statistically insignificant.

The nation’s income uptick, boosted by a rise in the number of Americans with full-time, year-round jobs, was the third year straight year with an increase, according to the Associated Press.

Yet households are still earning essentially the same that they did in 2007 just before the Great Recession, the bureau said. Although the figure is the highest recorded, Census officials say it can not be correctly compared to earlier records because of a change in methodology.

The figures suggest that the nation’s low unemployment rate — 3.9 percent — is forcing businesses to convert more part-time workers to full-time status. And with unemployed workers scarce, companies are hiring more people who previously weren’t looking for work. During 2017, the unemployment rate averaged 4.4 percent, the lowest level in 17 years.

At the same time, the data underscores the lasting damage the Great Recession did to the majority of American families. Incomes for the median household fell for five years after the recession began in late 2007, then recovered very slowly until 2015. That year, median household income jumped 5.1 percent, followed by a 3.1 percent gain in 2016.

The median is the point at which half the households are below and half are above. It can be a more telling measure than the average, which is distorted by extremely high incomes among the wealthiest households.

Despite a third straight year of income gains for a typical household, some measures of inequality worsened in 2017, in some cases after having improved during the previous two years. Income growth, for example, was strongest for the richest 5 percent of Americans, increasing 3 percent to $237,034. For the poorest one-fifth of the population, incomes rose just 0.5 percent.

Connecticut, among the most unequal states in the nation, was again near the top of the list in 2017 with a so-called Gini income coefficient of 0.49. A 1.0 Gini score represents a society in which one person takes in all income, a 0.0 shows a society in which the income is spread evenly among all members.

New York was the only state more unequal than Connecticut last year, scoring 0.51. And only six states had slower income growth than Connecticut in the inflation-adjusted income figures, the worst being Alaska, which saw a 4.3 percent decrease in median household income over the last year.

Last year, the number of people with jobs rose by 1.7 million, the census report said. And the number of workers with full-time permanent jobs increased 2.4 million.

For years after the recession ended in 2009, the number of part-time workers who would have preferred full-time jobs remained elevated. That figure has now fallen back to prerecession levels.

The growing economy and tighter job market are also lifting more Americans out of poverty. The percentage of Americans living below the poverty line fell to 12.3 percent in 2017 from 12.7 percent in 2016, a third straight decline. Since 2014, the poverty rate has fallen 2.5 percentage points.

Still, nearly 40 million Americans remain poor by the Census Bureau’s count, 334,000 of them in Connecticut.

The percent of Connecticut residents living under the poverty level dropped for the third straight year last year to 9.6 percent.