Blue Collar Boom? College Grads, Baby Boomers Big Winners in Trump’s Economy
U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out an eye-catching statistic in his State of the Union address Tuesday: the wealth held by the poorest half of American households increased three times as fast as the wealth held by…
U.S. President Donald Trump rolled out an eye-catching statistic in his State of the Union address Tuesday: the wealth held by the poorest half of American households increased three times as fast as the wealth held by the “1%” since he became president.
That’s true, according to Federal Reserve data.
On average, Americans have seen a 17% jump in household wealth since Trump’s election, while wealth at the bottom half has increased 54%.
“This is a blue collar boom,” Trump also said Tuesday. That’s less apparent. The biggest winners on a dollar basis were a familiar group – whites, college graduates, and people born during the “baby boom” between 1946 and 1964.
Since December 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full month in office, average household wealth has increased $15.8 trillion, but the vast majority went to groups that have tended to accumulate wealth in the past.
Even with a 54% increase in their household wealth under Trump, the poorest half of American households, around 64 million families, still have just 1.6% of household “net worth.”
HALF OF AMERICA
Net worth combines the value of assets like real estate and stocks and subtracts liabilities like mortgage loans and credit card balances.
Because America’s bottom 50% are starting from such a small base, given the enormous disparities in wealth in the United States, even large moves in their fortunes do little to dent the overall distribution. In dollar terms as of the end of September 2019, that latest data available from the Fed, the combined net worth of the poorest half of families was $1.67 trillion out of total U.S. household wealth of $107 trillion.
Here is what the Fed’s Distributional Financial Accounts have to say: