Friday’s jobs report reveals accelerating weakness in the American economy. Only 142,000 jobs were created last month, below expectations. Half of new positions were created in the unproductive government or quasi-government healthcare and social services sectors.
A record 8.2 million Americans have second jobs. So far this year, the number of unemployed Americans has increased by one million.
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More Americans are struggling financially as savings are significantly down and debt and delinquencies are up compared to four years ago.
Savings and disposable income are significantly down when comparing federal data under the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.
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The end of July saw American credit card debt collectively hit $1 trillion for the first time ever.
According to Axios, the Federal Reserve Bank confirmed on Tuesday that credit card balances in the United States increased in the second quarter of 2023 by $45 billion, or 4.6 percent, to a new total of $1.03 trillion. However, the collective credit card debt still has a lower share of American gross domestic product (GDP) than it did in 2010 or pre-COVID 2020.
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As inflation rose last year to a 40-year high, Americans’ credit card debt also soared, according to analyses published by the personal-finance website WalletHub.
In its Credit Card Debt study, Wallethub found that consumers racked up $87.3 billion in new debt in 2021. During the fourth quarter of 2021, debt increased by $74.1 billion, the largest increase ever reported, Wallethub notes. It was also a 63% larger increase than the post-Great Recession average for a fourth quarter.
By the end of 2021, the average household credit card balance was $8,590. “That’s $2,642 below WalletHub’s projected breaking point,” the report states.
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Many U.S. consumers racked up debt this holiday season, and most of them won’t be able to pay it off immediately, according to a report published Wednesday.
Around 36% of consumers went into debt, spending on presents, plane tickets and decorations, owing an average of $1,249, up from 31% in 2020, according to a report by LendingTree. Despite the percentage of holiday borrowers increasing in 2021, the average amount of spending dropped by 10% from 2020.
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Consumer debt in the U.S. has grown by 25 percent in five years and doubled since the turn of the century, according to the latest Clever Real Estate report
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Americans have accumulated more than $1 trillion in credit card debt, and that number will increase by tens of billions of dollars this year, according to a report by the consumer finance site WalletHub.
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