It’s offi­cial. The release of the new poverty rate in the U.S. has been released. As expected, the poverty level is higher, and is at it’s high­est rate since 1997.

From Reuters, writer Lucia Mutikani gives us the statistics.

The Cen­sus Bureau said the poverty rate rose to 13.2 per­cent in 2008, the high­est level since 1997, from 12.5 per­cent in 2007. About 39.8 mil­lion Amer­i­cans were liv­ing in poverty, up from 37.3 mil­lion in 2007.

The gov­ern­ment defines poverty as an annual income of $22,025 for a fam­ily of four, $17,163 for a fam­ily of three and $14,051 for a fam­ily of two.

Real median house­hold income fell 3.6 per­cent, the biggest annual drop since 1991, to $50,303 in 2008.

“This breaks a string of three years of annual income increases and coin­cides with the reces­sion that started in Decem­ber 2007,” said David John­son, head of Hous­ing and House­hold Eco­nomic Sta­tis­tics Division.

The longest and deep­est reces­sion in 70 years has been marked by ris­ing unem­ploy­ment as com­pa­nies aggres­sively cut pay­rolls to cope with slump­ing demand.

As of August, the unem­ploy­ment rate was at 9.7 per­cent, the high­est in 26 years, and almost 7 mil­lion peo­ple had lost their jobs since the start of the recession.

Ana­lysts said the poverty and income fig­ures under­scored the depth of the strain on households.

Like

Unlike