Median household income in the Pittsburgh metro was up in 2013, according to U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
“For Pittsburgh, we see that the 2013 median household income was just over $51,000, the poverty rate was 12.8 percent and a little over 7 percent of the people in the metro area did not have health coverage,” said Ed Welniak, chief of the Income and Statistics Branch of the Census Bureau.
This while many other metropolitan areas saw declines in median household income from 2010 to 2013, mostly in the once-booming areas of the South and West. Philadelphia posted the largest income drop among large metro areas outside the Sun Belt.
“If you were to look at what’s happened to Pittsburgh compared to the nation, income-wise, they’re doing a little bit better because they’ve actually seen a gain since 2010, whereas nationally, we’re sitting about the same.”
The gain in income is attributed, partly to the fast-growing natural gas industry in the western part of the state. The Pittsburgh region posted the third largest increase in median income among large metros, behind Portland, Oregon and San Francisco.
People in the Pittsburgh area living below the poverty level in 2013 was 12.8 percent, nearly flat from 2010’s 12.2 percent. The number of those with health insurance was also flat.
