The U.S. poverty rate fell to the lowest level on record in 2025 while median household income climbed to a record high, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.
The official poverty rate dropped 0.5 percentage points to 10.2% last year, leaving 34.5 million people in poverty, according to data released by the bureau. The decline was the second consecutive annual drop and the lowest rate since the agency began tracking the measure, while median household income rose 2.6% to $87,460, the highest on record dating back to 1967.
The White House hailed the figures, which cover the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term.
“President Trump’s proven economic agenda delivered historic working-class prosperity in his first year back in office, with record-high real income and record-low poverty—breaking the records he set during his first term,” the administration said in a statement.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent celebrated the report as he testified before a House committee, calling the data “several inconvenient facts” for the administration’s political opponents.
“Real wages are outpacing inflation,” Bessent said, according to his testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. “The bottom 25 percent of wage earners are seeing larger wage increases than those at the top.”
The official poverty rate for children fell to a historic low of 13.4%, the bureau said, and the rate for Hispanic Americans dropped to a record low of 13.9%. Median income rose 4.8% for black households and 3.0% for white households between 2024 and 2025, while income for Asian and Hispanic households showed no significant change.
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