> Yet I wonder how this data squares with this report from last month: > > "The US economy's safety net is bigger than anyone thought" Don't those express the

> Yet I wonder how this data squares with this report from last month: > > "The US economy's safety net is bigger than anyone thought" Don't those express the same underlying truth? In an economic situation without safety net backstops, citizens have to save in order to survive contractions. In modern america, they don't need to as much. So they don't. FWIW this is a real problem with "savings" as a metric. It's defined based on "disposable income", therefore fails to track things that probably "should" be savings but are accounted for separatly. Your 401k match or HSA deduction is not "savings", for example, even though clearly they are, and clearly they represent the kinds of savings that would have shown up in a bank account (and thus have been technically "savings") in the 60's.