As the chart above highlights, savings among American households is not great, especially for those lower wage Americans who we highlighted yesterday in our post regarding 50% of Americans not being able to meet basic needs. We speculated that if food and housing are a stretch for them then you can basically forget about seeing them save for retirement. Well, this picture certainly highlights their plight.

Modest wage growth, rising costs for housing, education, medical, insurance, and food, and loss of a traditional DB plan (for most of the private sector) and you have a formula for failure. We often talk about the social and economic implications of our failure to provide a decent retirement plan. How is the bottom 50% ever going to transition from the workforce with dignity?