by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
More people, more workers, more income, more debt.
The summary could go something like this in terms of the past three years: More workers (employment +7.79 million, or +5.0%, BLS data), earning more money (average hourly earnings +13.4%), boosted total disposable income (+20%, BEA data). And over these three years, these workers added to their debts but at a slower pace (+13.8%) than their income grew (+20%). So the overall burden of their debts in terms of their income declined even further. This is not to say that subprime – a small subset that is always in trouble, which is why it’s called “subprime” – isn’t, as always, in trouble.