Thread by @bencasselman

I know it's not what we're all focused on today, but the Fed is out with the Survey of Consumer Finances -- its once-every-three-years snapshot of Americans' finances. This data is for *2019*, so it's a look back in time to life before the pandemic.
nytimes.com/2020/09/28/bus…

The incomparable @jeannasmialek has our story, which has the key numbers and analysis. So start there! I'm still looking through the report, and will offer a few other tidbits in the thread below as I go.
Full data is here: federalreserve.gov/econres/scfind…

The biggest takeaway for me: Strong labor markets are good! The decade-long expansion brought the unemployment rate to its lowest level in half a century, and the result was rising incomes and rising net worth for low- and middle-income households.

The gloomier take: It took a record-long expansion to deliver broad-based economic gains, which were wiped out overnight by Covid. This is why economists are so worried about repeating the mistakes of the last recession: We don't want it to take another decade to get back here.

(@jeannasmialek and I discussed this risk at more length in our story last week: nytimes.com/2020/09/24/bus…)

Key stat given the recent divergence between the stock market and the rest of the economy: 53% of families owned *any* stock in 2019, including holdings in retirement accounts, etc. Among families in the bottom half of the income distribution, only 31% owned any stock.

Even that stat probably overstates how much the stock market matters to most everyday Americans. The median stock holdings (including retirement accounts) among families in the bottom 50% of earners is < $10,000. (Note: That's excluding the 2/3 of families with no stocks at all.)

Among those in the 50th to 90th percentile of earners, median stock ownership in 2019 was $40,000.
Among the top 10% of earners, it was ***$438,500.***

This stat is always striking: Median net worth for Black families with a college degree ($72k) is roughly the same as for white families *without a high school diploma.*

Here it is another way: The typical white family in the middle of the income distribution (~$60k in income) has a net worth of about $150,000. The average Black family *in the same earnings category* has a net work of less than $50,000.