Average Joe
The terms average Joe, ordinary Joe, regular Joe, Joe Sixpack, Joe Lunchbucket, Joe Snuffy, Joe Blow, Joe Schmoe, and ordinary Jane, average Jane, and plain Jane, are used primarily in North America and Australia and New Zealand to refer to a completely average person, typically an average American. It can be used both to give the image of a hypothetical "completely average person" or to describe an existing person. Parallel terms in other languages for local equivalents exist worldwide.
Historically, there have been several attempts at answering who exactly is the average American. For example, the Saturday Evening Post and The Washington Post have attempted to answer the question. Both articles agreed that the average American is a white Christian female, who is part of a couple, and is politically independent. Admittedly, there are problems with this answer. In 2001, for example, no single household arrangement constituted more than 30% of total households. Married couples with no children were the most common constituting 28.7% of households. It would nonetheless be inaccurate to state that the average American lives in a childless couple arrangement as 71.3% do not.
Today, statistics by the United States Department of Commerce provide information regarding the societal attributes of those who may be referred to as being "average". While some individual attributes are easily identified as being average, such as the median income, other characteristics, such as family arrangements, may not be identified as being average. In terms of social class, the average American may be described as either being middle class, or working class. As social classes lack distinct boundaries the average American may have a status in the area where the lower middle and upper working class overlap.
"Average Joes" are common fodder for characters in television or movies, comics, novels, or radio dramas. On television, examples of "average Joes" include Doug Heffernan, Alan Harper and Homer Simpson. In the film Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, the protagonist, Peter, owns a gym for those who do not want an intensive workout, and the patrons of the gym are all somewhat overweight. The gym is named Average Joe's Gymnasium. In real life, as chronicled in his bestseller The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen, Kevin O'Keefe successfully completed a nationwide search for the person who was the most statistically average in the United States during a multi-year span starting in 2000. Newsweek proclaimed of the book, "The journey toward run-of-the-mill has never been so remarkable."
Families
As the United States is a highly diverse nation, it should not be surprising that there is no single prevalent household arrangement. While the "nuclear family" consisting of a married couple with their own children is often seen as the average American family, such households constitute less than a quarter of all households. Married couples without children are currently the plurality constituting 28.7% of households, compared to 24.1% for nuclear families.Another 25.5% of households consisted of single persons residing alone. Recent trends have shown the numbers of nuclear families as well as childless married couples decrease. In 1970, 40.3% of US households consisted of nuclear families with childless couples making up 30.3% of households and 10.6% of households being arranged in "Other family types."
By 2000 the percentage of nuclear families had decreased by 40%, while the number of other family types had increased by 51%. The percentage of single households has also steadily increased. In 1970, only 17% of households consisted of singles. In 2000 that figure had increased by 50% with singles constituting 25.5% of households. The most drastic increase was among the percentage of households made up of single males, which nearly doubled from 5.6% in 1970 to 10.7% in 2000.
Today, one can no longer refer to the nuclear family as the average American household, neither can one identify the current plurality of married couples without children as "the average." Recent statistics indeed indicate that there is no average American family arrangement, but that American society is home to a wide and diverse variety of family arrangements. The one thing the data does indicate is that the average Joe most likely does not reside in a nuclear 4-person family.
A statement that can be made, however, is that most Americans will marry at least once in their lifetime with the first marriage most commonly ending in divorce. Today a little over half of US household include a married couple, showing a significant decrease since 1970 when 70.6% of households included a married couple. Current trends indicate that people in the US are marrying later and less often with higher divorce rates.
Despite the declining prevalence of marriage, more than three-quarters of Americans will marry at least once in their lifetime. The average age for marriage for a male was 26.8 and 25.1 for a female. Americans are also likely to remarry after their first divorce. In 1990, 40% of all marriages were remarriages. All together one can conclude that while there is no prevalent average household arrangement, most Americans will get married and divorced once with a considerable number of Americans remarrying at least once.
Income
is most commonly measured either by individual or household. By only including those above age 25, the vast majority of students and all working adolescents are excluded. The average American, as discussed in the educational attainment section, is a high school graduate who attended but did not graduate from college. From the below table in 2017, the median personal income of such Americans was $37,968, and among those who worked full-time their median personal income was $43,377.| Measure | Some high school | High school graduate | Some college | Associate's degree | Bachelor's degree or higher | Bachelor's degree | Master's degree | Professional degree | Doctorate degree |
| Persons, w/ earnings | $24,576 | $33,669 | $37,968 | $37,968 | $61,440 | $56,592 | $70,608 | $91,538 | $79,231 |
| Male, w/ earnings | $22,214 | $32,307 | $39,823 | $43,785 | $70,437 | $62,304 | $78,222 | $111,881 | $91,604 |
| Female, w/ earnings | $20,784 | $28,896 | $33,360 | $33,360 | $54,480 | $49,248 | $61,200 | $65,012 | $68,887 |
| Persons, employed full-time | $30,598 | $38,102 | $43,377 | $47,401 | $71,221 | $64,074 | $77,285 | $117,679 | $101,307 |
'''Source: US Census Bureau, 2021'''
Income at a glance
Education
The US adult population seems almost equally divided between those who have and those who don't have a college degree, including an Associate degree. While only a minority of Americans, 35%, have graduated from college with a Bachelor's degree or more, a majority, 61%, of Americans had "some college" education. Also, 45% had an associate degree or more, with only roughly 13.7% having a graduate degree. On the other end of the strata, 10% of adults did not graduate from high school.It is fair to assume that the average Joe/Jane is not a college graduate, but is a high school graduate. However, it is difficult to determine how much college education the average American has, as the population is split between those who graduated, attended but did not graduate, and did not attend college. Over the past half century the educational attainment of the US population has significantly increased. In 2019, the median personal income for American adults age 25+ was $46,985 overall, specifically $52,297 for males and $40,294 for females.
| Education | Age 25 and over | Age 25-30 |
| High school diploma or GED | 89.80% | 92.95% |
| Some college | 61.28% | 66.34% |
| Associate degree | 45.16% | 46.72% |
| Bachelor's degree | 34.98% | 36.98% |
| Master's degree | 13.04% | 9.01% |
| Professional degree | 3.47% | 2.02% |
| Doctorate | 2.03% | 1.12% |
Social class
In terms of social class the average American could be referred to as being both a member of the middle or working class. The discrepancy is largely the result of differing class models and definitions of what constitutes a member of the middle class. Currently the vast majority of Americans self-identify as middle class, yet some experts in the field such as Michael Zweig of Stony Brook University or Dennis Gilbert of Cornell University have brought forth different theories. The majority of American adults are neither professionals nor managers and lack college degrees.Occupational autonomy is a key factor in regards to class positions. Professionals and managers who are exclusively labeled as middle class, and often as upper middle class, conceptualize, create and consult in their jobs. Due to their great expertise they enjoy a high degree of autonomy in the workplace.
The American economy, however, does not require a labor force consisting solely of professionals. Instead it requires a greatly diverse and specialized labor force. Thus the majority of Americans complete assigned tasks with considerably less autonomy and creative freedom than professionals, leading to theory that they may better be described as being members of the working class.