Since 2020, the stock market has more than doubled. Americans who own substantial financial assets are reveling in economic success. For everyone else, the economy feels very different. This summer, the average family will spend nearly $800 just to keep their home cool, almost 40% more than in 2020 and up 10.5% since last summer.
Americans now carry more than $1.2tn in credit card debt. Nearly 60% say they are living paycheck to paycheck. One in six households is behind on its utility bills. Every year, utilities disconnect electric service more than 13m times. Nearly 40% of lower-income households struggle to pay their energy bills.
Yet if you listen to the Trump administration, the economy is booming because of rising stock prices. The problem is that record stock prices and record corporate profits tell us a great deal about how wealthy Americans are doing and very little about ordinary families. For millions of Americans, the economy isn’t measured by the S&P 500; it’s measured at the gas pump, in the grocery store and when the monthly electric bill arrives.
And those bills keep getting bigger.
At the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, we’re used to helping low-income families struggling to keep the lights on and the heat and air conditioning running. What worries me today is how many middle-class families are facing the same pressures. Families who thought they were doing everything right. Families who are now draining savings accounts, carrying larger credit card balances and putting off major purchases just to stay afloat.
For them, a $100 increase in monthly expenses is not an inconvenience. It can mean the difference between paying every bill and falling further behind. Recent events have only made matters worse. Moody’s estimates that the oil market disruption of the last three months has cost the average family $450. That’s real money. It means less money for groceries, less money for healthcare and less money for the electric bill. For a household already living paycheck to paycheck, it can be the difference between staying current on bills and falling behind.
And the outlook is getting worse, not better.
The conflict with Iran continues to threaten global oil supplies, pushing up the price of gasoline. Data centers are placing growing demands on the electric grid in regions where electricity costs are already rising. Healthcare costs continue to increase. Higher energy prices are working their way through the entire economy. In other words, many of the costs families are struggling with today are likely to increase tomorrow. What is most frustrating is that Washington seems more focused on celebrating asset prices than addressing affordability.
There is money to address these problems. The question is how we choose to spend it. Rather than helping struggling families make ends meet, billions are being committed to a war with no clear objective or endpoint. Rather than investing in cheaper, cleaner and more stable sources of electricity to meet rapidly growing demand, we’re doubling down on volatile oil and gas markets and asking families to absorb the consequences through higher utility bills and gasoline prices.
At the same time, many of our economic competitors are investing aggressively in the energy systems that will power future growth. And rather than easing the financial burden of healthcare, housing and groceries, Washington continues to support policies that reward people who are already doing well while leaving working families exposed to rising costs.
At some point, the consequences become impossible to ignore. Americans are angry because they feel as if they’re working just as hard as they always have and getting less in return. They’re angry because the people measuring economic success seem insulated from the rising costs everyone else faces.
The US remains one of the wealthiest countries in the world. We have the resources to ensure that working families can afford necessities such as electricity, housing, healthcare and food. The real question is whether we are willing to admit that an economy cannot be considered successful when stock portfolios and corporate profits are booming while millions of households are falling behind on their bills.
Washington keeps telling Americans to look at the stock market. Americans are looking at their electric bills, their grocery receipts and their credit card balances. Until policymakers start paying as much attention to kitchen-table economics as they do to Wall Street, average Americans will fall further and further behind, struggling to pay for household necessities such as food, gas, and energy while wealthy asset-owners hoard their stock earnings.
Mark Wolfe is an energy economist and serves as the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association representing the state directors of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the co-director of the Center on Energy Poverty and Climate. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy at George Washington University
