US Pandemic Savings Have Finally Been Spent, SF Fed Study Says

US households have exhausted the pile of cash squirreled away during the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

“The latest estimates of overall pandemic excess savings remaining in the US economy have turned negative, suggesting that American households fully spent their pandemic-era savings as of March 2024,” San Francisco Fed economists Hamza Abdelrahman and Luiz Oliveira said in a blog post published Friday. The duo have been updating their estimates regularly over time, and last year flagged that the US savings surplus was lasting longer than previously expected, helping to hold up spending. ...