The data comes as the U.S. economy slowly recovers from an economic slump that sent the unemployment rate to a 26-year high of 10 percent in October 2009. The jobless rate has since fallen and was at 7.3 percent in August.

With stock portfolios recovering -- the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index as of yesterday had risen 21 percent since Dec. 31 -- the wealthy have shaken off much of the recession.

The top 10 percent of earners -- those with household income above $114,000 -- collected more than half the nation’s total income in 2012, according to an updated research paper published earlier this month by University of California, Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez. That’s the largest proportion since the government started gathering such data in 1917.

The study, using preliminary 2012 data, also found that those with the top 1 percent of incomes saw their earnings grow 31.4 percent from 2009, when the recession ended, to 2012. The bottom 99 percent saw growth of just 0.4 percent.

Nationwide Portrait

The Census Bureau’s findings released today come from the American Community Survey, which takes a sampling from about 3 million addresses that include households as well as group living situations such as nursing homes and prisons. It looked at demographic, economic, housing and social characteristics and provided geographic detail for cities or counties with as few as 65,000 people.

Frey’s analysis of the new data incorporated a basket-full of measures collected in the survey, ranging from fertility to the mobility of the nation’s residents.

One of those measures, the proportion of people in households who are non-relatives, grew to 5.9 percent in 2012, up from 5.8 percent the previous two years and above the 5.5 percent recorded in 2007 before the recession was fully under way. The most recent number showed only a slight increase from the previous year, suggesting that the trend of taking on roommates or boarders to save money may have leveled off.

Households that included “other relatives,” such as a grandchild or elderly parent, remained at elevated levels as well. That number stayed even at 7.3 percent in 2012, the same as 2011. The figure was 6.7 percent in 2007.

Birth Rate