Every six months, the United States Trustees Office publishes census data of median income by state and family size. This data is important to Bankruptcy practitioners such as myself, because clients whose household incomes are above the median income for a family of their size in their state are subject to the “means test”. Those that come in below it are not. The new median income numbers take effect for Bankruptcy petitions filed on or after November 1, 2014. So anyone in Massachusetts who is borderline high income (and not in a family of three) may want to look into filing in October before the new, lower median income numbers take effect. In Massachusetts the changes are as follows:
Family size November 1 Median Pre-November 1 Median
1 $55,356 $56,611
2 69,673 70,588
3 85,637 85,503
4 106,812 106,841
In New Hampshire, the median income for a family of one (1) has increased to $55,804, surpassing Massachusetts, while the median for a family of four (4) has decreased rather dramatically to $94,432 from $98,927, seriously lagging Massachusetts. For families of two (2) and Three (3) the medians have decreased fairly significantly to $67,659 and $81,709 from $68,395 and $83,867 respectively.
This being an election year, I am confident that there will be plenty of commentary (most of it useless) on why this is happening. I will abstain on lending my voice to this cacophony. The statistics are bearing out what many of us have known for quite a while – people are working harder and harder for less and less. These numbers have barely changed since the March 2009 numbers, which were released at the trough of “The Great Recession”. I know that the economy is recovering. I just do not know very many people who are benefiting from this recovery.