zlacker

And personal savings are way up. But it's unlikely either of these trends will hold after 2021.

>>jedber+(OP)
Source? Anecdotally most folks I know have had to burn through their savings after living off of unemployment or going through underemployment this past year.

>>badRNG+B
https://www.statista.com/statistics/246268/personal-savings-...

>>flatli+21
when your disposable income is zero, doesn't that drive the statistics way out of wack?

>>badRNG+B
Anecdotally as someone in a family all of whom are thriving financially during the pandemic, here are possible reasons it could be true.

* My student loan payments are frozen, I believe the total balance of student loans that are frozen is something like 85% country wide.

* People working remotely = low transit expenses.

* No live events = low entertainment expenses.

* Raging pandemic = low travel expenses.

* Investment = stock market has been very profitable since march. I made 100% last year just on random long term investment.

Basically, if you have a job that was exceeding the minimum threshold of living expenses, any of the extraneous things you were spending money on, other than eating out maybe, have evaporated.

Obviously there is a notable segment of the population that is not doing well, can barely if at all cover day to day expenses, and unemployment has gone up, but that segment isn't necessarily a majority.

That's all just speculation though, I'm not claiming parent is correct.

>>airza+y1
The poorest X% not showing up in any statistics used for policy making is probably a longstanding problem... and it's probably hard to estimate by how much X has changed over the past year.

>>airza+y1
I do not know whether it accounts for a negative savings rate, but the graph does show that people with disposable income were saving more this past year during the pandemic, which means they were spending less on consumer goods. There were probably two driving factors behind this: fear of economic instability due to the pandemic, and a lack of availability of paid activities due to the same. Presumably, consumer spending will rise again, as will travel and hence fossil fuel consumption per the original post.

>>badRNG+B
A recent episode of NPR: The Indicator covered this. "real disposable income per capita in the U.S. has gone up by about 6 percent year-to-date from last year. Right now, it's on track to reach the fastest rate of growth since 1984." Basically the super high savings rates by people who stayed employed and didn't vacation, go to restaurants, drive, etc. outweigh those getting hammered by unemployment. Also the stimulus checks were given to everyone. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510325/the-indicator-from-plane...

>>jedber+(OP)
That started before covid.

>>badRNG+B
St Louis Federal Reserve: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

Keep in mind this is savings economy wide divided by personal income economy wide, so people with big numbers (high earners) disproportionately affect it.

>>polka_+q2
You most likely nail it. The flip side obviously is people who don't have remote jobs. More anecdote, but this has been really hard on family members who have service industry jobs, and while they haven't told me to directly, I assume their savings isn't doing great based on a number of different factors.

>>polka_+q2
And don't forget clothing... no need to get new outfits if you are home... no dry cleaning if you wore suits ...

>>mrfred+27
This has to do with the stimulus checks.

>>whimsi+u8
But also because households have lower expenses due to not being able to engage with the service industry, travel, shopping, and leisure expenditures. People are simply spending less because they're stuck at home.

>>polka_+q2
> stock market has been very profitable since march. I made 100% last year just on random long term investment.

Hmm. All this makes me wonder if the country opening back up is going to cause the market to flatten out for a bit as people have less money and incentive to invest. Food for thought.

>>ogre_c+Ge
Intuition says that people who have to choose between investing and other things aren't the maority of investors.

I'm think the economy will liven up a fair bit once people are out and about spending again, possibly even over-correcting.

>>jedber+(OP)
Not true... US carbon emissions have been going down for over a decade, even as population increases.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/carb...

>>nostro+si
Of course, by not by the amounts we saw in 2020. I suspect we'll move back to the previous trend line by 2022.

>>nostro+si
Mostly due to displaced manufacturing though no?

>>badRNG+B
If you haven't lost your job then your savings are both up (markets) and not being spent (as there's nothing to spend them on.)

>>badRNG+B
For every 3 people that lost their jobs in the peak of unemployment there's 17 people who still had their jobs and most of them got a couple of stimulus checks. The pandemic has increased inequality.

>>ogre_c+Ge
I could also see it flattening due to people having more options again. The majority of the companies that are listed in the public markets are businesses that didn't have to close. Nation wide retailers, tech companies, oil and gas, all the things that were deemed essential or could be done virtually. It's the mom and pop stores and restaurants that took the brunt of the shutdown, when things are more open again those businesses will be the big winners and we might see them take some revenue from the bigger stores.

>>franci+X5
This is the problem with averages. For a majority of people, it is up. For a large minority, it is down catastrophically. That averages out to slightly up.

>>polka_+q2
Anecdotally, as someone who's work kept on trucking (surprisingly - we sell content for display in public spaces where people pass or congregate) - 2020 was a banner year for my family. We saved more than we ever have before and the price of our various assets soared.

We even had a 20% bump in gross revenue while bringing our costs down, and that's after 2019 was flat for us (prior to that we were hitting 30%+ for a handful of years in a row).