The Daily Money: Are forecasters too optimistic about the US economy?
Good morning! It's Daniel de Visé with your Daily Money.
Forecasters have become so confident of a soft landing for the U.S. economy, they’re already unbuckling their seatbelts.
But reports in the past week or two, combined with other red flags, are revealing signs of turbulence, Paul Davidson reports. For their safety and comfort, economists – not to mention consumers and financial markets – might at least want to keep their seatbelts loosely fastened.
In plainer English, the Federal Reserve may well notch a rare soft landing, with its sharp interest rate hikes since early 2022 slowing the economy enough to bring down inflation without triggering a recession. But there’s still a real risk of a downturn, and the final approach may be bumpy.
The average US 50-something is now a millionaire
Sometime around age 50, the average American can now expect a household net worth exceeding $1 million.
How did so many fifty-somethings become millionaires?
Household wealth swelled at a record pace during the pandemic. Between 2019 and 2022, the median net worth of American families jumped 37% to $192,900, after adjusting for inflation. It’s the largest rise ever recorded by the federal Survey of Consumer Finances, released last fall. Surging home values and rising stock ownership fed the surge.
Some of the new numbers are startling. Average household net worth now tops $500,000 for Americans in their late 30s. For late-forty-somethings, it exceeds $750,000. For fifty-somethings, it reaches seven figures.
If you’re a fifty-something and you’re not worth a cool $1 million, do not despair. Those numbers are averages, and the super-rich drive them wa-a-ay up.
The “median” American household – picture the middle number in a long list of numbers – achieves a net worth of around $300,000 in the 50-to-59 age range, a far cry from $1 million.
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One in 10 U.S. restaurants serves Mexican cuisine, according to recent findings from the Pew Research Center. This trend reflects an expanding Mexican American population, with 37.2 million people, or 11.2% of the U.S. population, tracing their ancestry back to Mexico.
In the 2010s, the U.S. Hispanic population grew by 23%, a rate that outpaced the nation's overall population growth of 7%, according to the Census Bureau. Of the Hispanic population living in the U.S., nearly 60% identify as Mexican American.
Pew Research Center reported that 85% of counties in the U.S. have at least one Mexican restaurant. The other 15% of counties, without any Mexican cuisine, tend to be smaller populations, representing 1% of the entire U.S. population.
The data analyzed by Pew Research Center comes from SafeGraph, which collects information on millions of places of interest around the world, as well as the review site Yelp.
About The Daily Money
Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer news from Paste BN. We break down financial news and provide the TLDR version: how decisions by the Federal Reserve, government and companies impact you.