A Continued Recession In 2010 For Most Americans

During 2010, the first year of the official "recovery", real median income in the U.S. fell by 2.3% compared to 2009 while the poverty rate rose from 14.3% to 15.1%.

The explanation for this is in part that these calculations use the consumer price index while GDP numbers used "chained price index" that systematically produce lower inflation estimates (and therefore given certain nominal income estimates, higher real income estimates), in part that the economic growth supposedly taking place really didn't happen considering the deterioration in terms of trade, and in part due to the fact that high income earners received more than the entire increase in aggregate real income that after all did occur.