Starting with the 2021 data release, the method for inflation adjusting median dollar amounts for previous years in the Comparison Profiles changed.  Prior to 2021, older medians were calculated from household, family, non-family, and earnings distributions using inflation-adjusted microdata. Beginning in 2021, the microdata for previous years will not be adjusted for inflation when calculating medians.  Instead, the prior year medians shown in the Comparison Profiles will be calculated by directly multiplying previously published medians by the inflation factor, using the Consumer Price Index Research Series (CPI-U-RS). Data users should now be able to more closely match the estimates by inflation-adjusting previous year published estimates. For those medians that do match exactly, the difference is due to rounding and should not be off by more than one dollar.

This change impacts medians shown in Comparison Profile 03-Comparative Economic Characteristics (CP03) and Comparison Profile 04-Comparative Housing Characteristics (CP04).  

For CP03 the medians that will be adjusted with the new methodology are median household income, median family income, median nonfamily income, median earnings for workers, median earnings for male full-time year-round workers, and median earnings for female full-time year-round workers.

For CP04 the medians that will be adjusted with the new methodology are median owner costs for mortgaged units, median owner costs for non-mortgaged units, and median gross rent.