13% Make Over $100k in 2008
A $100k salary is not what it used to be.
- In 1984, a $100k salary put you in the top
1% of the workforce.
- In 2008, a $100k salary put you in the top
13%.
Here are where the data comes from: On July 8, 2008 the Tax Foundation published the latest federal individual income tax
data as reported by the IRS for the years 1980 thru
2006. We used these data to estimate the numbers for
2008, and to estimate how many earned more than
$100,000. Here's a summary from their
Table 7 - "Dollar Cut-Off, 1980-2006 (Minimum AGI
for tax return to fall into various percentiles)"
along with our estimates (an extrapolation of the
data) for the year 2008:
| |
1% |
5% |
10% |
13% |
25% |
50% |
| Act. 1984 |
$100,889 |
$55,423 |
$43,956 |
|
$29,360 |
$15,998 |
| Act. 1996 |
$227,546 |
$101,141 |
$74,986 |
|
$45,757 |
$23,174 |
| Act. 2005 |
$364,657 |
$145,283 |
$103,912 |
|
$62,068 |
$30,881 |
| Est. 2008 |
$362,000 |
$156,000 |
$112,000 |
$100,000 |
$66,000 |
$33,000 |
How the data plotted for 2008
| 1% |
of the workforce makes over |
$362,000 |
|
| 2% |
of the workforce makes over |
$255,000 |
(Close to the Obama $250k benchmark) |
| 3% |
of the workforce makes over |
$205,000 |
|
| 5% |
of the workforce makes over |
$156,000 |
|
| 10% |
of the workforce makes over |
$112,000 |
|
| 13% |
of the workforce makes over |
$100,000 |
(The traditional $100k benchmark) |
| |
|
|
|
|
