We weren’t just imagining it: Average Household Income Has Dropped $3K Under Obama. Mitt Romney has recently been making that claim on the campaign trail, so the New York Times ran the numbers…

President Obama took office in the first quarter of 2009, when median household income was $54,797.63. As of the last quarter of 2011, median household income was $52,377.21.
 
This was the interval Mr. Zandi suggested using to check Mr. Romney’s statement, and it shows an income drop of $2,420.42. That’s not $3,000, of course, but it’s still pretty bad.
 
One could also reasonably argue that it might be more appropriate to use the quarter before Mr. Obama took office as the baseline, rather than the quarter in which he was sworn in. In the fourth quarter of 2008, median household income was about $55,380.17.
 
Starting from that quarter gives us a decline of $3,002.96, almost exactly the number Mr. Romney cited.

 
No wonder it increasingly feels like we’re trying to do more with less. We are.

But hey, we should be happy with our lot. Pity the first family, who’s in even worse shape. They’ve experienced a 70% income reduction since ’08:

2008: $2,656,902
2009: $5,505,409
2010: $1,728,096
2011: $789,674
 

And according to Jodi Kantor’s book, “The Obamas,” they’re definitely worried about maintaining their lavish lifestyle post-White House;

Even the president made uncomfortable jokes about why his wife needed so many things. Behind the scenes, aides said, the Obamas were concerned about money: the president’s books could only sell so many copies, and it would be years until he could write more and the first lady could write her own. From vacation rental homes big enough to accommodate the Secret Service to all the personal entertaining they did at the White House, their lifestyle had grown fearsomely expensive.

Altogether now: “Awwwwwww…”