Spotlight/economy: How Buffalo Niagara households have to make do with less

Our household income back in 1949 was the 13th highest in the nation as Buffalo Niagara bustled with high-paying steel and auto jobs, along with a host of other manufacturing positions to support them.

But times changed. The steel industry wilted. The auto industry was zapped by foreign competition. And technology has taken away even more industrial jobs.

The trouble is, the jobs that came after the factory work went away didn’t pay nearly as well. The region never developed a strong startup mindset until about a decade ago. The brightest young people went off to college and never came back. The college students who came here didn’t stick around. The technology boom that transformed the nation only spawned a trickle of new businesses here.

And so, our earnings suffered. The median household income here now is about 10% lower than the national average, according to U.S. census data.

We have more households earning less than $50,000 (40.5%) than the rest of the country (36.5%), while high-earning households with incomes above $200,000 are much less common here. Just 6.3% of Buffalo Niagara households earn more than $200,000. Nationwide, it’s 9.7%.