With Barack Obama’s jobless recovery stalling out at just 1.8% GDP growth and little to no rise in median income, a study showing that American workers are way behind in saving what is needed to retire should come as no surprise.
The findings from the National Institute of Retirement Security show that American households, measured by retirement account balances, are $14 trillion short of their target retirement savings. When measured by net worth, households fall $6.8 trillion short.
Researchers highlighted that 38.3 million working-age households do not have any retirement account assets. A third of households that are nearing retirement have no assets saved, while another third have saved less than one times their income. The median savings balance of those near retirement is only $12,000.
Part of the problem might also be cultural. With the government inching everyday towards cradle to grave nanny statism and the media cheering along the way, people might have a false sense of security that no matter how irresponsible they are, the government will always be there.
This, of course, puts an even bigger burden on those American workers who are acting responsibly.
The irony of all this is that the one institution doing remarkably well in Obama’s anemic recovery is the American stock market. The Federal Reserve has been pumping cheap money into the economy to help the market defy gravity for years now. Had Democrats and the media not come together to obstruct President Bush from passing a law that would’ve allowed Americans to put a portion of their own Social Security into the safer corners of the market, the American worker would almost certainly be in better shape than they presently are.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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