Update from Facts USA: 2021 State of The Union In Numbers

The 2021 State of the Union in Numbers Article II of the US Constitution requires that the president of the United States deliver an annual State of the Union, including a budget report, legislative proposals, and national priorities.  USAFacts collected the data behind the most-common topics from four decades of State of the Union speeches to create the State of the Union in Numbers, a data-driven, nonpartisan resource to measure the state of the US without rhetoric.  Some key takeaways from this year’s comprehensive new report: The wealth of the middle class (defined as the middle 20% of income earners) has grown 66% since 1990. However, because middle class wealth has grown slower than overall wealth,middle class families went from owning 12% of US wealth in 1990 to 7% in 2020. In December, over half of people with K-12 students in the home reported their kids spent less time learning compared to before the pandemic. Internet access for online learning is not equally available, with two-thirds of Black children reporting having reliable internet available for their studies. However, over three-quarters of white and Asian children reported having internet access.   The federal government spent $6.6 trillion in fiscal year 2020 — or $19,962 per person. Medicare, Social Security, defense and veterans, debt interest, support to businesses, plus assistance like stimulus checks and unemployment insuranceaccounted for 73% of spending. This includes funding distributed to states.    The population grew by 1.6 million from 2018 to 2019, with 38% of growth from immigration. This 0.5% annual growth rate is the lowest since 1918. US Census Bureau data about 2020 population growth data is not yet available.     The federal government made $2.6 trillion in funds available to respond to COVID-19 and spent $1.6 trillion of that in fiscal year 2020. Over $1 trillion of the funds were spent on small business loans, unemployment compensation, and stimulus checks. In comparison, 2009’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act cost an estimated $831 billion. Find something interesting while digging into the data? Each chart in the State of the Union in Numbers is shareable. With 83% of Americans agreeing that the spread of misinformation is a major problem, the State of the Union in Numbers empowers people to come together over a shared set of facts and debate a path forward.   Black History Month  This February, USAFacts celebrates the contributions of Black servicemen and servicewomen in the US military. There were just over 2 million Black veterans in the country in 2019. See more about this population over time, see this report.  And finally... This week, Tableau Foundation is launching its new Racial Equity Data Hub featuring data from USAFacts. The Hub collects dashboards, case studies, and subject matter experts to share data with researchers and advocates working to advance racial equity in the United States. In Tableau Foundation’s own words: “Understanding how a particular metric captures the community’s experience and seeing how that metric compares to others—be it geography, or by racial group—can focus local discussions about both problems and solutions.” Check out USAFacts data in action here. Clarification: The February 8 newsletter stated that “Black women are more likely to own their own business than any other racial group of women." A clearer way to describe the data in last week’s chart is that, when comparing ownership of women of all racial categories, Black, non-Hispanic women have the highest percentage of ownership compared with men in their racial category. The report has been updated to reflect this.