Lane County’s Per Capita Personal Income Increased in 2022 But Drops When Adjusted for Inflation
December 27, 2023The U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released its 2022 estimates of personal income for substate areas (counties and townships).
Personal income includes all forms of income: earnings by place of work; dividends, interest, and rent; and government transfer payments (largely Social Security and Medicare). Total personal income is then divided by population to create per capita personal income (PCPI).
PCPI is one of the most commonly used measures to gauge an area’s relative economic wellbeing, but there are limitations. For instance, since it includes the entire population, areas with a high concentration of children or students can skew the results lower since there is a large portion of the population with little or no income. Conversely, areas with an older population likely have a high proportion of retired people who may have a high level of wealth but lower relative incomes. Finally, it does not account for an area’s cost of living. People in areas with a low cost of living can live comfortably on less per capita income. That being said, let’s take a look at Lane County’s PCPI.
Lane County’s 2022 nominal (not adjusted for inflation) PCPI increased $246 (0.4%) to reach $56,188. However, when adjusted for the high level of inflation seen in 2022, it decreased $4,725 (-9.2%). In comparison, Oregon’s nominal PCPI increased $675 (1.1%) to reach $62,303 while its inflation adjusted (real) PCPI dropped by $4,528 (-8.2%). For the U.S., nominal PCPI increased $1,040 (1.6%) to reach $65,470 while its real PCPI dropped $2,691 (-4.6%). Lane County’s 2022 decrease in real PCPI followed increases of 9.4% in 2020 and 5.7% in 2021.
Lane County’s total personal income was unchanged at $21.5 billion between 2021 and 2022. When the data are adjusted for inflation, however, total personal income decreased by $1.9 billion, or -9.6%. The decrease in 2022 follows an inflation-adjusted increase of roughly $1.1 billion (5.9%) in 2021.
The components of personal income for Lane County show that 55 percent was from earnings; 20 percent from dividends, interest, and rent; and 25 percent from transfer payments, primarily in the form of Social Security and Medicare. Lane County has similar component portions of personal income compared with the U.S. and Oregon, although Lane County is somewhat higher in transfer payments and lower in earnings by place of work, likely indicating a somewhat higher proportion of retirees and students.
Relative to other areas, Lane County’s per capita personal income dropped slightly to 90 percent of the statewide and dropped slightly to 86 percent of the U.S. figures. Lane County’s 2022 per capita personal income ranked 10th among Oregon’s 36 counties.
More information is available at the Bureau of Economic Analysis website at www.bea.gov.