Taking the long term view of real median household income

See this impressive chart from the New York Times showing the drop in real (cpi adjusted) median household income since 2000.  The source for this chart is a new Sentier Research report by two former officials at the U.S. Census Bureau (Gordon Green and John Coder). 

Source: New York Times based on Sentier Research Report:
Household Income Trends During the Recession and Economic Recovery

This approach of showing change over time compared to a single baseline reference value often proves to be much more interesting than month-over-month or year-over-year displays.

Before even reading the full article, an underlying story with high explanatory power literally jumps off this chart at you.

You can find further details at: Recession Officially Over, U.S. Incomes Kept Falling.  The article introduces some new and helpful metrics such as the average cut in pay at rehire for those who lost jobs.  The NYT article also provides some disaggregation of the headline number for different groups (by age, by education, by race) but unfortunately does not provide charts for these.