State Plates
The New Jersey Income Plate
In New Jersey, income is where the atlas's population counts meet household economics. This plate places Black New Jersey in the national income geography: the benchmarks below are the published national figures for Black households, and New Jersey's own distribution figures — 1.45 million Black residents, 14 percent of the state — give the scale of the community those national patterns describe within the state's borders.
The National Pattern
The income figures take their local meaning in New Jersey, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Median household income is the most widely used single measure of a population's economic position, and for Black households in the United States the Census Bureau's annual income report places the figure at $56,490. An atlas benchmark earns its place by locating New Jersey, never by ranking it.
The income figures take their local meaning in New Jersey, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. Household income counts the combined money income of everyone aged 15 and over living in the home — wages, salaries, self-employment income, Social Security, pensions, interest, and cash benefits — before taxes. Locating New Jersey is the benchmark's purpose; ranking it is not.
The income figures take their local meaning in New Jersey, where the table's state rows set the population this benchmark describes. The national median household income in the same report is $77,719. Against that benchmark, the Black median of $56,490 is about 73 cents on the dollar. The point of the benchmark is position: where New Jersey stands, stated before anything is made of it.
Reading This Plate
How to read this plate: the state rows are the published census figures for New Jersey; the benchmark rows are the published national figures, labeled as benchmarks. In New Jersey, the plate makes no state income estimate of its own — it sets the state's population, counted exactly, beside the national income record, measured exactly, which is the honest first step of any income geography.
The Population Behind the Plate
For New Jersey, the national benchmark is a yardstick, not a description; the description is the state's own distribution, tabled below. New Jersey holds about 1.45 million Black residents — Black alone or in combination — roughly one in six of its people, with Black alone at about 1.22 million, or 13 percent. Where this general material turns into a specific place is the table below: New Jersey's own rows.
In New Jersey, that national income pattern is read against the state's own households, whose published share and count stand in the table below. Black New Jersey suburbanized early and thoroughly. The general pattern means little until the table resolves it into New Jersey's numbers.
Residents moving between states — domestic migration — are the stream that built and rebuilt Black geographies across a century and a half, New Jersey's among them. Read against the population counted on the distribution plate, the national median describes the economic center of gravity of the community that New Jersey's 1.45 million Black residents belong to. Holding the structure still while the numbers move is the gazetteer's work — the only way an atlas stays honest across editions, for New Jersey as for every entry.
An atlas is patient with its subjects. In New Jersey, the income geography of Black America changes at the speed of households — of graduations, hires, diagnoses, incorporations, and moves — and the federal surveys that measure it publish on their own calendars. What does not change between releases is the structure this plate records: a counted population in New Jersey, a measured national pattern, and the standing invitation to read the two together, state by state, until the whole country has been read that way. That is the work of this section of the atlas, and the New Jersey Income plate is one page of it.
The subject here is The New Jersey Income Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. A note on this plate's figures, stated once and plainly: Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%; Black residents, alone or in combination: 1.45 Million. For New Jersey, the figures are the argument; the text only keeps them in order.
The subject here is The New Jersey Income Plate, and the reading is the atlas's standard one: the published figures first, the interpretation after. How this plate is read, for New Jersey: begin with the map, whose shading bands the published Black share into the legend's five classes, then turn to the table, which states the measures in figures — Black share of the state population (alone): 14%; Black share, alone or in combination: 15.6%. The plate reports what the sources publish for New Jersey and leaves alone what they do not.
| Measure | Figure |
|---|---|
| Black share of the state population (alone) | 14% |
| Black share, alone or in combination | 15.6% |
| Black residents, alone or in combination | 1.45 Million |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income, Census Bureau annual report | $56,490 |
| United States benchmark — Black median household income per $1 of the national median | 73 Cents |
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States (Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement); American Community Survey. Method: Figures are drawn from the published federal sources named on this page, for the geography named; tile shading bands the published Black population share into the five legend classes. Counts are rounded as published by the source agency, and national benchmark rows are labeled with the basis they are published on.