Profile: Wage & Income Trends
Please note, most of these updates are for the time period of 2010-2020. Therefore, the effects of the COVID pandemic and economic recession are reflected in this report.
The average annual salary in the Detroit region is $64,225 - roughly $200 higher than the salary of the average American. The Detroit region’s average salary has increased 32% since 2010.
Most Detroit region industries offer salaries that are similar or slightly above the national averages. However, in 2020 salaries in three sectors are substantially lower than average:
- Natural Resources and Mining: $13,782 under the national average
- Information: $42,901 under
- Financial Activities: $17,696 under
Salary growth also varies by industry. Salaries in two sectors grew faster than the national rate from 2010-2020:
- Financial Activities: +47.8% | (compared to +44.2% in the US)
- Natural Resources and Mining: +41.5% | (+22.8% in the US)
Industries with salaries that grew considerably slower than the national rates include:
- Information: +49.6% | (compared to +83.2% in the US)
- Professional and Business Services: +37% | (+40.5% US)
- Construction: +30.2% | (+35.8% US)
- Government: +20.7% | (+30.2% US)
- Manufacturing: +14.3% | (+27.6% US)
Salaries in the Information sector grew 49.6%. This is a small figure when compared to the IT sector’s national salary growth rate of 83.2%.
Per capita income in the Detroit region has remained under the national average since 2010. However, from 2010 to 2020, the Per Capita Income has grown steadily every single year. Overall, from 2010 to 2020, the Detroit region had a Per Capita Income growth rate of 51%, almost 5% higher than the national average of 46.3%. In 2020, the Detroit region and U.S. had per capita income growth rates of 7.5% and 6.2%, respectively.
Median household income in the Detroit region is nearly equal to the national data. The growth rate of Detroit region's median household income from 2010-2020 (+34.3%) was slightly less than the growth rate of national median household income (+34.6%).
During the economic recovery following the Great Recession, the Detroit region's median household income climbed from $48,446 in 2010 to $65,083 in 2020. In the same period, the US median household income expanded from $50,046 to $67,340.
Poverty in the Detroit region is higher than the national average. In 2020, 13.2% of the Detroit region’s population lived in poverty. This figure is a notable improvement when compared to the 2011 poverty rate of 17.9%.
Measures of child poverty follow a similar pattern. In the Detroit region, child poverty peaked in 2011, when 25.6% of people aged 18 and younger lived in poverty. By 2020, this figure fell to 18.1%. The child poverty rate in the Detroit region remains higher than the national child poverty rate of 15.7%.
Since 2010, the population in poverty in the Detroit region has decreased by 20%.
