Rubbish Check
CBS MoneyWatch · September 15, 2026
source“Americans’ incomes hit a record high in 2025. Now for the bad news.”
R2/ 10
Lightly altered
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates CBS MoneyWatch's claim that Americans' 2025 median income of $87,460 was a "record high" with a catch a 2/10 because the headline itself flags the offsetting bad news, and the body correctly quantifies the real story: just 2.5% inflation-adjusted growth since 2019 versus 19% in the prior six years.
The Verdict
Base fact, lightly altered. The headline states the true topline number and immediately signals there's a downside, which the article then delivers accurately: six years of near-zero real income growth, a widening split between top and bottom earners, and a poverty improvement that predates safety-net cuts still working through the data. The only nitpick is compressing a multi-layered story (gender gap, income inequality, poverty caveats) into a single teaser line, but nothing in the headline misleads.
What actually happened
The Census Bureau reported that the median U.S. household income, adjusted for inflation, rose to an all-time high of $87,460 in 2025, surpassing the prior 2019 peak. The article correctly frames this as a shallow victory: real income growth has been essentially flat for six years, and gains were uneven across income groups and sexes.
Key facts
- Median household income hit a record $87,460 in 2025, only 2.5% above the 2019 level of $85,320, which had held as the previous peak until now.
- Median income climbed 19% from 2013 to 2019, versus just 2.5% from 2019 to 2025, a sixfold slowdown in the growth rate.
- Top 10% of earners saw income growth of 1.7% to $261,300, while the bottom 10% saw a slight decline to just over $20,000.
- Women's pay rose 3.2% while men's declined slightly; the gender pay gap narrowed to women earning nearly 84 cents per male dollar, up from under 81 cents in 2024.
- The official poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% in 2025.
What to watch for
- Poverty and income data for 2026, due in 2027, will be the real test: OBBBA's Medicaid and SNAP restrictions took effect in 2026 and aren't reflected in this release.
- SNAP enrollment already showed a sharp decline in 2026, a leading indicator that safety-net effects are still to hit the income data.
- Watch whether the top-vs-bottom income divergence widens further as OBBBA's tax provisions fully phase in.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
