. The US consistently ranks around ninth or tenth in the world for per capita GDP, and American workers have some of the highest average household incomes in the world. Unfortunately, the gap between the wealthy and poor is also larger in the United States than anywhere else in the world. The overall financial picture for the United States, as of 2014, included $269.6 trillion of assets owned by households, businesses, and governments within America's borders. That represented 15.7 times the annual gross domestic product of the United States that year. On the other hand, the US owed debts that year amounting to $145.8 trillion. That equates to about 8.5 times the annual gross domestic product for 2014.
Although the United States experienced a significant economic downturn that began in 2008, causing the US economy to contract by 2.8 percent in 2009, the economy has returned to its typical trend for sustained growth since 2010. Unemployment dropped from a high of 9.9 percent in 2010 to a much more typical 5.4 percent by April of 2015.