In time for President Biden’s State of the Union address on Thursday, USAFacts has released its annual “nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot” of how things are going in the country.
The “State of the Union In Numbers” is intended to be an unbiased report to inform policy discussions, debates, and decisions — which could prove especially useful in an election year when Biden’s job is on the line.
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer launched USAFacts in 2017 to provide insight into how the nation is being run. The site draws on data from more than 70 government sources and regularly crunches numbers in an effort to take the pulse and track trends in America.
This is the fifth year that the Seattle-based non-profit has released research pegged to the State of the Union.
Here are some highlights and key figures shared in the new report (with links to more data from each category):
- Workers’ average hourly earnings were up 4% in December 2023 compared to a year prior. However, when accounting for inflation, it was less than 1%.
- The unemployment rate was 3.4% at the beginning of 2023 and 3.7% by the end.
- The number of immigrants turned away or apprehended at U.S. borders reached 3.2 million in FY 2023, the most since at least 1980.
- Immigration officials removed nearly 109,000 people from the U.S. in FY 2022, the most recent year where data is available. This is the fewest removals since 1996, except for 2021.
- 334.9 million people lived in the United States in 2023 — a 40% increase since 1980.
- Single adults without kids comprised 29% of all U.S. households in 2023, up from 13.1% in 1960.
- Provisional data for 2022 shows that life expectancy increased by 1.1 years to 77.5, after decreasing in 2020 and 2021.
- Fentanyl-involved overdose deaths increased from 0.8 per 100,000 people (or 2,628 deaths) in 2012 to 22.8 per 100,000 people (74,127) in 2022. Fentanyl has been involved in more overdose deaths than any other drug annually since 2016.
- In 2022, the violent crime rate fell for the second consecutive year, down to 380.7 per 100,000 people. The property crime rate increased for the first time since 2001, up 6.7% to 1,954.4 per 100,000 people.
- Federal, state, and local governments spent $282.1 billion on law enforcement and corrections in 2021 — the most since at least 1980 (after adjusting for inflation).
- Eighth-grade math and reading proficiency fell between 2019 and 2022 to the lowest rates in at least 15 years.
- On average, people whose highest level of education is a bachelor’s degree earned $1,493 per week in 2023, roughly 66% more than workers with a high school diploma.
- Average prices for a gallon of regular-grade gas fluctuated between $3.29 and $3.81 in 2023 after reaching nearly $6 in June 2022.
- Out of 8.1 million energy-related jobs in 2022, jobs in energy efficiency technology employed more people than any other field: 2.2 million people.
- In 2023, the average global temperature reached the highest recorded average temperature since data collection began in 1850.
- In 2023, the U.S. experienced 28 “billion-dollar” disasters, resulting in a total cost of $92.9 billion.
