The personal saving rate in the US is 4.6% for January 2025, down from 3.5% in December 2024(1). It’s a far cry from the highs the country saw at the height of Covid, when people were saving 33.8% of their disposable income in April 2020(2).
Through the 12 months leading up to January 2025, Americans are saving roughly 4% of their disposable income. This is a long way off from the pandemic highs of 16.8% in 2020 and 11.8% in 2021. It’s also well below the average personal saving rate since 1959, which sits at 8.4%.
The percentage that people are saving from their disposable income neared historic lows in 2024 and is only doing slightly better in 2025. Americans are saving an average of roughly 4.6% of their disposable income through January 2025. The lowest annual savings rate since 1959 was 2005’s personal saving rate of 2.9%.
The US saw its highest personal saving rate during the pandemic, when people squirreled away about 13%. of their disposable incomes in 2020 and 2021. In fact, outside of the pandemic-impacted year 2020, the remaining top 10 highest personal saving rate years were all between 1967 and 1982.
While we’ve got a ways to go before 2025 is in the books, if we were to put 2025 into the books today it would be the 7th th savings rate in the past 66 years. As it stands, all of the 10 worst personal savings rate years occurred since 1999, with 2005 the worst savings year on record at 2.3%.
The 1970s were the most prosperous in terms of what Americans were able to save, the personal saving rate for the 1970s hitting an average of 12.2%. Those trying to save during the 2000s weren’t able to put away even half of that at an average personal saving rate of just 4.2%.
How do these rates translate to dollars? The average annual disposable income was $2,358 back in 1959, when an annual personal saving rate of around 10.3% meant Americans were saving an average of $244. Fast-forward to 2025, when America’s average disposable income is $17,744 — $816 was tucked away at an average personal saving rate of 4.6%.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis defines the personal saving rate as the percentage of disposable personal income — also called after-tax income — that people save. It’s the amount of a person’s income left over after spending money — say, on bills or loans — and paying taxes.
Economists watch the personal saving rate to learn about the financial health of Americans and predict consumer behavior and economic growth.
There will be 12 releases in 2025, with the next update coming on Friday March 28, 2025, with information related to business formation in February 2025.