Marylanders saw a bigger average increase in personal income last year than in 2006, according to new government estimates.
Personal income in the state was about $46,000 per person last year, up 2.2 percent from a year earlier, adjusting for the sapping effects of inflation. That measure - a stand-in of sorts for wealth, including not only wages but also such sources of income as interest, dividends and employer contributions to health care and retirement - rose 1.8 percent in 2006.
The estimates, which are preliminary, were released yesterday by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Maryland kept its fifth-in-the-nation rank for personal income, behind Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New York. First-ranked Connecticut had a per capita figure of just over $54,000.
Nationally, personal income rose 2.3 percent, to about $38,600 per person.
Daraius Irani, director of applied economics at Towson University's RESI consulting arm, said he was "somewhat surprised" that 2007's gain outpaced 2006's in Maryland, given that it was marked by spiraling energy prices, credit tightening and problems in the housing market.
"But also remember, during this entire period, Maryland's unemployment rate has remained very, very low," he said.
The unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in the state last year, better than the year before. Nationally, the jobless rate stood at 4.6 percent last year, unchanged from 2006.
Still, economists point out that Maryland's bigger increase in personal income last year doesn't mean everyone's feeling better off. It's an average, so some people did a lot better and some a lot worse. On top of that, living costs rose more quickly toward the end of the previous year than they did on average in 2007, leaving many feeling less wealthy as they headed into 2008.
"The people who have less disposable income, they're going to feel the impacts of rising food prices and rising energy prices much more than someone with more disposable income," said Andy Bauer, regional economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond's Baltimore office.
Because personal income counts employer contributions to health care and retirement, it also includes money that's less tangible - or at least less immediate - than paychecks.
Maryland's 2.2 percent rise in personal income was middle-of-the-pack among the states, not unusual for a wealthy place, though both New York and Connecticut saw heftier increases - 4.6 percent and 3.7 percent, respectively.
The biggest rise in personal income: 6.2 percent in Louisiana. The Bureau of Economic Analysis attributed the jump in part to $5.4 billion in "Road Home" subsidies to residents rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina.
Arizona saw the smallest increase - about half a percent.
The poorest state by the personal-income measure was Mississippi, at about $28,800 per person. That's about half of No. 1 Connecticut.
jamie.smith.hopkins @baltsun.com