This widespread wealth throws light on why the number of workers who say they expect to be working past their early 60s has fallen below 50 percent for the first time. “You’d have to go back to the late 1990s to find a similar era. “Maybe it’s easier to focus on the negative, but a huge number of people, maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well,” said Dean Baker, an economist who was a co-founder of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. A few years ago, the monthly total was between three million and 3.5 million.
More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily quit in March, the highest number since the government started keeping this statistic in 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. It is boosting corporate profits by unprecedented amounts while also giving just about everyone the notion that a better job might be within reach. But for the moment, this flood of wealth is quietly redefining retirement, helping fuel Silicon Valley and stoking a boom in leisure and entertainment. A slowing economy, renewed inflation, high gas prices and rising interest rates could all undermine the gains achieved over the years. The queasy stock market might be signaling that the boom is ending.
If you were unable to buy a house because of spiraling prices, the soaring amount of homeowners’ equity is not a comfort. It has happened during a time of fascination with the schemes of the truly wealthy (see: Musk, Elon) and against a backdrop of increased inequality. It was a slow-build phenomenon in a country where news is stale within hours. At the rate they have been increasing in value, a lot of them are in effect a giant piggy bank that families live inside. There are 83 million owner-occupied homes in the United States. As many as half of those workers have retirement accounts that were fattened by a prolonged bull market in stocks. Much more quietly, it has been a time of great financial reward for a large number of Americans.įor the 158 million who are employed, prospects haven’t been this bright since men landed on the moon. This is an era of great political division and dramatic cultural upheaval.
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