Incomes Are Finally Rising

For the first time since the recession, Americans' income rose last year. A new report from the Census Bureau Tuesday showed a 5.2 percent increase in U.S. household incomes in 2015, the first annual increase in eight years. The median income in 2015 was $56,500, an increase of $2,800 from the prior year, after adjusting for inflation.

But that's not the end of the story. We're still not back to where we were prior to the recession. The median household income is still 1.6 percent lower than it was in 2007, before the recession.

It also remains 2.4 percent lower than the all-time peak in American incomes. We reached the high-water mark during the economic boom of the late 1990s.