President Joe Biden’s aides have repeatedly pointed to Americans’ robust pandemic-era savings as a cushion against inflation -- yet the money is rapidly evaporating for 26 million low-income families.
From Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, top administration officials are counting on cash that households built up in the Covid years to serve as a buffer against consumer prices rising at the fastest clip in four decades.
Brian Deese, the White House’s top economic adviser, has put the average savings at $10,000 for middle-class Americans, thanks to federal aid and pandemic-induced spending constraints.
“There was an analysis that came out recently that showed middle-class Americans had an additional $10,000 in savings than before the pandemic,” Jean-Pierre told reporters in a briefing on Tuesday. “Another analysis found that all income groups had higher checking account balances at the end of March than they had pre-pandemic.”
A White House spokesperson pointed to analysis by Moody’s Analytics and the JPMorgan Chase Institute for the data points Jean-Pierre mentioned.
The latest data from the Federal Reserve, however, suggest that the White House is looking at only part of the picture. While US savings have grown by $3.26 trillion overall since before the pandemic, two-thirds of that boost went to the highest-earning 10% of households, and one-third to the top 1%.
Meanwhile, among the bottom one-fifth of US incomes, cash holdings -- currency plus money in check-writing accounts -- were down by 22% in March from their levels at the end of 2019, according to the data published by the Fed on Friday.
The savings erosion at the bottom of the income scale -- where pandemic gains for some 26 million households have already been wiped out -- may undercut recent comments from Biden administration officials.
“Bank balances are high, it’s clear that most consumers -- even lower-income households -- continue to have buffer stocks of savings that will enable them to maintain spending,” Yellen said on Sunday.
She added that while she believes inflation and the Fed’s rate increases will slow economic growth, “I don’t think a recession is at all inevitable.”