Americans Are Broke, Hiring Dries Up, Loans Go Delinquent | Numbers Scream Ep. 20

Added: 2026-05-09

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[00:00:28]Welcome back to number scream. I'm Tom Ellsworth the bisdoc and we have five stats this week that came across my desk. Last week we were talking about entrepreneurship and the spirit of American stick tuitiveness and working through tough times. Now not all of us want to be going for those side hustles because that means that we're having a tough time and sometimes you feel like we have to. But it also shows you the American spirit. This week five stats came across my desk talking about the statistics that are squeezing America.

[00:00:56]Let's go take a look. Personal consumption expenditures, it's one measure of inflation. It's up to 3.5%.

[00:01:03]Personal savings rate has dropped to 3.6%.

[00:01:06]Student loans, remember, they got reopened about a year and a half ago.

[00:01:10]One in four are now late. We'll show you what that looked like in 2019. It was a different story before COVID. Hiring is a 75,000 average versus 167 a month average. So, you can see something slowing down there. And finally, leading economic indicators were down again for April. And that makes eight out of 10 last readings, last months of the LEI is down. I have all that. I'm going to put it together and tell you what's up this week.

[00:01:44]First up, personal consumption expenditures. What we do is we take a look at the price of those going up and down. It's one measure of inflation. You know, you don't trust everything you have for the government, but this is one measure that's reasonable. Now, this comes from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And some people will say you're not measuring energy, arm, energy. They all come together in a relative form. And here we can see from last July, so third quarter, and we have fourth quarter and first quarter, three quarters in a row, we've gone from just over two and a half steadily up. Now, true. This last loop right here, that is the beginning of the Iran war.

[00:02:22]And the effect of it is pretty clear.

[00:02:24]The core PCA is 3.2%.

[00:02:28]But headline PC, personal consumption expenditure is 3.5. If you go even go back here is about 3.4 3.3 here and gas at the pump is on a national average 4.3%. So you can see there's a meaningful I wanted to look at this as a trend. People like to say no inflation's not so bad. It's only the war. You're only counting this. But take a look.

[00:02:49]It's been pretty steady up in fourth quarter, first quarter a little bit and then the jump here. Even if you ignore March, the end of the first quarter now that we're in May and we have all of our March numbers now because it takes about a month to get that from the government.

[00:03:03]This is where we're sitting here. That was the Fed 2% target that Jerome Pal and the Fed said they were waiting on so that they could declare victory over inflation and also begin to adjust interest rates in ways that the White House and many others like me and you want to see them adjusted down. But right now we're getting farther away from 2%, not closer to it.

[00:03:29]And next up, savings rate. Personal savings rate historically has been in the 8 to 9% range. That means in times of economic prosperity or economic neutrality, the American consumer, this goes back 2019, was saving about 8 eight and a half%. Maybe some was through a 401k, maybe some you set your savings account. Nonetheless, America by and large on average was saving for a rainy day. So, let's go look at the chart.

[00:03:54]There's that average rate I just discussed, historical average. Now, let's go take a look since last April.

[00:04:00]Here's the line I'm referencing the 8 to 9% historical average 8.4. Then you look at the year. Here we are March of 26 because now we have all the March numbers done. And go back to April of 2025. You see the peak the peak was a year ago at 5.5. Over the last year, the savings rate for America has been dropping. And take a look at what happened at the beginning of the year.

[00:04:24]Remember this time where I was pointing out that credit cards were approaching 1.2 trillion. Now they're 1.3 trillion.

[00:04:30]And BNPL was there some overextensions.

[00:04:33]47% of people had a late payment within their first two payments for BNPL. Buy now, poor later. Well, guess what? Take a look at what that did. Holiday spending on all of that, the savings rate, it's correlated. It wasn't isolated. The American consumer is feeling the pitch. Higher credit card debt, use of B&PL by some people, and the savings rate has dropped. This is a pinch. We just talked about the PCE, personal consumption expenditure is going up, one measure of inflation.

[00:05:02]That's two sides of the pinch and the consumer, but now let's go to the young consumers under 30 and take a look at the student loans. They're out in the workforce and they have an additional piece of debt that has some rather bad news.

[00:05:16]And here is the student loan data that I was just talking about. One in four are now late. Let's take a look here. We are currently sitting at a delinquency rate of 25%. Meaning one in four student loans is now late. Now remember, there's a lot to unpack with student loans. So let's go back precoid, pre- pandemic 2019, it was about 9%. And that was close to the historical average. So at any given time, about one in 10 student loan borrowers was behind. A little or a lot, but they were behind. Then we go into pandemic and take a look. It was a pause. as we told everybody, don't worry about your student loans. Just wear the mask, sit inside, and don't go out in the sunlight. That would absolutely kill the virus. Stay with the mask inside.

[00:05:59]Speaking to Uncle Harriet. Then we move into the pandemic. And as you can see, guess what? During the pandemic, there was a pause put on student loan paybacks, which also effectively paused the delinquency. And we waited. Then everyone was told, remember, we had the bounce out year, 2023. And after that, they said student loans are reactivated.

[00:06:20]you'd be have to go back to making payments. And almost immediately after people weren't accustomed to making payments for 3 years, suddenly the delinquency jumps over 15. And as we go to 2025 and now we have the complete stats through the end of 2025. They've all been compiled as first quarter came to a close in March and announcement started in April. We now have visibility and it's bad. 25% of student loan delinquency as of the end of 2025 and it's probably going to be going up as we tabulate statistics here in 2026. This is not good. The average impact is 57 points on your credit score that affects the payment that you might get on a car.

[00:07:02]Your car is stolen or wrecked or is old and you have to get a new car. You have to get a loan. 57 point difference in your credit score which could affect the interest rate on your car loan. And it's a total of 9 million students out there or grads that are now delinquent on student loans. This shows you an additional pinch. I call it the third pinch. The first pinch personal consumption expenditures. The second pinch savings rate. Now the third pinch on a segment very important segment of people in their mid20s to mid-30s delinquency rate on student loans.

[00:07:38]Another pinch. And how do you get out of a pinch? you work hard, get raises, get the bonus, and get the new job if they're hiring.

[00:07:48]Speaking of hiring, fourth up is hiring.

[00:07:51]It's down to an average of 75,000 a month from 167,000 a month. Let me explain. We've been looking back over the last several years. Here we have an early average for 2026 first quarter where we have an average of 75,000 jobs a month created versus if you go back to 2024 just one year and four months ago it's 167,000 a month. So you can see what's been happening. There's been a pinch. Now Biden owns this. This was the this was the Biden economy. And I don't want to get into whose economy is who. The election was in November.

[00:08:30]Trump wasn't elected till the beginning of 2025, but then Trump's coming out supposed to be helping us build jobs and do things and he's got to get over some of this. But nonetheless, this is where we are. We go from 167 a month in job creation. And by the way, a lot of that under Biden, we later found out, was reactivations of people that worked in hospitality, theme parks, movie theaters, restaurants. They said, "Oh, we created new jobs." Wait a minute.

[00:08:57]Some were new jobs, but there is a whole lot of reactivations after COVID as people went back to their old job or the same job they were doing, which isn't exactly the economy creating new jobs.

[00:09:08]It's the economy goes COVID and a lot of people get furled and laid off and then they bounce back into those jobs as we have the 2023 bounce out year and we're back to being a working economy and growing and all of that. So, there's a little bit of an illusion there.

[00:09:23]Nonetheless, we go down to about 110,000 jobs a month in 2025, and now we're down to 75,000 a month. Meanwhile, the wage growth year-over-year has only been about 3 and a.5%. But the real wage gain is negligible because inflation was about the same. In other words, the wage growth and inflation come together. So the wage gain is people are just stuck in the same place, which is not good. So now we have the fourth pinch. So this I call this the fourth pinch. Now let's go to the fifth item that kind of brings it all together. It's called the leading economic indicator. And that one is in trouble too.

[00:10:04]Fifth up the leading economic indicator down again eight months out of 10. Let's go take a look at it. The conference board is a very interesting website to go look at. You can look up the conference board leading economic indicators. search for that and you get this and it gives you a relative negative or positive which gives you a great summation of negative or positive pace of the economy and many things in it. Well, guess what? We are sitting here with a lot of red but January and February were good. So, and by the way, take a look as you saw a trend going in this direction. So, the number of jobs I just showed you was going down year-over-year, but Trump and his policies were having a a positive impact. Say what you will about tariffs.

[00:10:48]Take a look at where they were going. We were going here, but then the Iran war and here we go. Words talk, numbers scream, and right now PCE is down again.

[00:10:59]It's been eight out of 10. It was down.

[00:11:02]Even though it was a trend coming up as you can see it, the losses getting smaller, moving up like this. Now it's down again. The leading economic indicator down. It's all coming together to say the American consumer who's responsible for 70% of the total economy terms of their spending and where they live and what they do because remember they buy all the things that get built by all the companies represented on Wall Street and private companies. The American consumer is getting pinched in five ways. Let me show you how it all sums up. So here we go. Here's that one story told five ways. Prices accelerate with PCE. may not be much, but it's been steady. Then the cushion drains away as people's savings rate is down to 3.6%.

[00:11:47]Credit gets destroyed. Remember those 57 points that the people that are delinquent on student loans lose. Then stat four, wages can't catch up because the number of available jobs is going down. Even though the economy is fairly robust, the number of jobs that are people are fighting for and new jobs out there is less. So you can't leave to go to a new job after four years and say, "Hey, I got four years of experience. I think I'm ready to be a manager. I think you have an opening. Maybe you'll pay me more. That's a normal thing as we develop in our career. And it allows our wages to catch up. Or we get promoted in the current job and now we can get a bonus and the wages go up. But the wages aren't keeping up. And so the leading economic indicators lei from the conference board as I said suddenly flashes red. And this is where we're at.

[00:12:33]Last week I talked about entrepreneurship and the spirit of the American consumer, the American citizen driving hard. This is what's pushing them to look for side hustles because not all people want side hustles. Even if we salute them and encourage them for going out and trying to do it, some of them are doing it out of sheer necessity, not simply because they want a nicer car or they want to do this or that. Sometimes it's pure necessity, but it's the American spirit getting him through a time of pinch when the American consumer desperately needs help.

[00:13:05]That's number scream for this week with all the things that are pinching the American consumer. We call balls and strikes. Call them as we see them. And that's what we see this week. If you like this, please subscribe and also leave a comment below. We read the good, the bad, the ugly, the snarky. We read them all and we want to know what you want us to cover next week. So, leave a comment and let us know. Until next time, I'm Tom Ellsworth with the Bisdoc, and I hope I left you better than I found you.