Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 88% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Powers: Average tech salary exceeds combined Black and Latino household incomes

Laura Weidman Powers · a16z Podcast | If Coding is the New Literacy, How Can More People Code? · Jan 2, 2019 · at 5:46

Laura Weidman Powers, co-founder of Code 2040, discusses economic inequality and how technology careers can drive economic mobility for underrepresented communities.

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“That wealth gap, that income divide and how the salary of an average tech worker is more than the median household income of a black family and a Latino family combined.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

The claim, plainly

As of 2014, the average salary of a tech worker in the US is greater than the sum of the median household income of a Black family and a Latino family.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Across standard tech industry salary benchmarks and U.S. Census Bureau data, the average salary of a tech worker exceeded the combined median household income of Black and Hispanic families. In the mid-to-late 2010s, Black median household income (~$37,000–$41,361) and Hispanic/Latino median household income (~$45,000–$51,450) totaled approximately $82,000 to $92,800. In comparison, tech industry benchmarks—such as the Dice Tech Salary Survey ($93,244 to $97,859), CompTIA Net Tech Employment averages ($118,000–$123,000), BLS Software Developers mean wages ($108,080–$111,620), and marketplace data like Hired.com ($135,000–$146,000)—consistently surpassed this combined median total.

U.S. Census Bureau data recorded combined Black and Hispanic median household incomes at ~$82,000 (2015–2016) and $92,811 (2018).
Dice Tech Salary Survey reported average national tech salaries of $93,244 in 2018 and $97,859 in 2019.
CompTIA estimated average annual tech industry wages at ~$118,000 in 2018 and ~$123,000 in 2019.
BLS OEWS data showed annual mean wages for Software Developers at $108,080 in 2018 and $111,620 in 2019.

Checked against

[1] fastcompany.com [2] census.gov [3] census.gov [4] policycommons.net [5] census.gov [6] census.gov [7] endhomelessness.org [8] census.gov

average salary tech worker median household income Black Latino combined "median household income" "Black" "Hispanic" "2020" "2021" "Census Bureau" "Laura Weidman Powers" "average salary" "tech worker" OR "Black family" "median household income" "Black" "Hispanic" "2017" "2018" "2019" "Census Bureau" "BLS" "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" mean wage 2018 2019 2020 2021 CompTIA Cyberstates average tech salary 2018 2019 2020 2021 BLS average salary computer mathematical occupations 2018 2019 2020 2021

assessed as of 2026-08-27

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Mentioned

median household income of a black family and a Latino family combined salary of an average tech worker

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