By Colleen O’Dea for NJ Spotlight

Income continued to rebound from the recession in most New Jersey communities, but housing costs also rose and home values continued to fall, the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows.

Yesterday, Census officials released 2013 American Community Survey results, including information about municipalities and other smaller areas. The report covers a broad range of 40 topics including demographics, family relationships, education, work and housing. The data is based on an average of five years of information — covering 2009 through 2013 — to account for smaller sample sizes. As a result, comparisons with prior years can be skewed because the years of data overlap in the prior samples — for instance, 2009 data is included in both the 2013 estimates and the 2009 estimates.

That said, the unadjusted median household income for the 2013 estimates was higher in two-thirds of New Jersey’s municipalities than it was in the 2009 estimates. That’s better than the years during the 2007-09 recession, when incomes generally declined.

The most recent data includes only a small portion of the recent recessionary period, which officially ended in June 2009. But it does not account for inflation, which was roughly 9 percent between 2009 and 2013. New Jersey’s economic recovery has generally lagged behind the nation as a whole.

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