What is being compared?
These are 2024 annual pretax money incomes from the 2025 CPS ASEC, released September 9, 2025. The individual population is all people age 15 and older, including those with no income or losses, not just full-time workers. Household totals include money income of household members age 15 and older.
Money income excludes capital gains and noncash benefits. Age refers to March 2025; household age is the householder’s age. Do not compare an individual salary with household income unless that is deliberately the question you want answered.
How are the ranks calculated?
We accumulate Census’s published, already survey-weighted counts and divide by their sum. Published counts are rounded and may not add exactly to a separately published total. The point estimate interpolates uniformly within a finite income bin; the full bin rank range stays visible. Equal-income ties cannot be reconstructed from grouped tables.
Why might there be only a range?
The first and last intervals are open-ended. We do not extrapolate within them or invent an exact top-1% rank. Upper limits differ by series: all-age tables end at $250,000+, individual age groups at $100,000+, and household age groups at $200,000+. Sampling error exists in addition to the displayed grouping uncertainty.
A reproducible example
In the all-household series, $75,000 falls near the 45.2nd estimated percentile. That is a grouped-data estimate, not an official exact rank. Switching to an individual or age-specific population changes the comparison.
Sources and updates
- Census income table — hinc-06
- Census income table — hinc-02
- Census income table — pinc-11
- Census income table — pinc-01
CPS ASEC technical documentation · Next income release schedule. Reviewed August 31, 2026. The next income-year release is scheduled for September 15, 2026; it is not included here.