A 5% decrease is "significantly worse off"? And it's still higher than 2018--it's not really reasonable to expect an increase every single year, you should look at the longer-term trend.
The median isn’t a simple average. The minimum difference is 5%, people who lost 50+% only count as one more person below the old average. So that 5% represents a great deal of pain for millions not simply a slight haircut.
And sure the long term trends reverse things as I mentioned, but it took 15 years to recover where it was in 2019. Most Americans are simply cut off from wider economic growth and recovery.
