2003: $42,381.00 - inflation adjusted to 2023: $68,953.12
2023: $74,202
So the average American (i.e. 50% earned more, 50% earned less) earned more in 2023 than in 2003, even accounting for inflation. There are a ton of ways to calculate “relative to wages” (i.e. are we talking minimum wage, median, average?), but it looks like people are better off today than 20 years ago, and prices for cars are about the same.
Median individual income:
Median household income:
So the average American (i.e. 50% earned more, 50% earned less) earned more in 2023 than in 2003, even accounting for inflation. There are a ton of ways to calculate “relative to wages” (i.e. are we talking minimum wage, median, average?), but it looks like people are better off today than 20 years ago, and prices for cars are about the same.
Median seems a much better metric than average.
The census.gov data for 2021 has median individual income at about $35k - much smaller than your sources for 23.
Did it really increase nearly 50% in 2 years?
Source
I’m not sure where that data is coming from, here’s what I found (source). This data set in particular (Excel file) shows the following:
That’s for 2021 and 2022, and the median seems to be $49k in 2021 and $48k in 2022. $50k in 2023 seems plausible.