Ben Casselman and Reuben Fischer-Baum of 538 have gone inside the numbers (as they say) of the economic recovery and their findings are not comforting.
Among them:
… particularly troubling is how weak the recovery has been in many of the places hardest hit by the recession. In past business cycles, the worst-hit places also tended to have the strongest rebounds. But that hasn’t been the case this time around. The Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Florida, area, which sustained the biggest income decline of any big metro area during the recession, saw its median income fall even further in 2013. Overall, there is almost no correlation (R < 0.1) between an area’s income loss during the recession and its gains or losses since then.
And:
Income isn’t the only measure by which the recovery has lagged. Household net worth, the value of a family’s assets minus its debts, has fallen during the recovery as well. One big reason for that is the weakness in the housing market, as Thursday’s data made clear.
There’s more. And while it is not encouraging, you might want to read the whole thing.
