Older U.S. Households Pulled Away as Real Wages Fell

Grace Kim

U.S. initial jobless claims fell to 189,000 for the week ending Oct. 31, 2026, and the unemployment rate stood at 4.1% in October 2026; days later, voters delivered what NBC News called a Democratic landslide.

An Arkansas Advocate summary of the AP Voter Poll said Republicans were punished in the midterms for Trump’s economic policies. The result sat uneasily with low claims and with market assessments of strong job and GDP growth, while wage data showed flat or falling real pay and renters faced higher prices.

What did the headline labor data show?

Charlie Bilello noted that jobless claims had fallen to their lowest levels since summer 1969. That pointed to a strong headline labor market.

Yet real average hourly earnings for private workers stood at $11.26 in September 2026 on a preliminary, inflation-adjusted basis, below $11.32 a year earlier. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index registered 48.1 in September, well under the level the index treats as recessionary.

For workers seeking new roles, that combination meant a favorable hiring backdrop could coexist with weaker purchasing power.

Why did market voices disagree?

Chamath Palihapitiya wrote on X: “When I’m wrong, I’m wrong. I thought when unemployment was low, GDP was hi, household income rose, it meant everyone was winning.” He added: “This was a complete and total repudiation about the state of the economy. The economy is broken.”

Palihapitiya’s diagnosis was that the economy had decoupled progress for asset owners from progress for wage earners.

David Sacks gave a different diagnosis on X: “Republicans lost the midterms because of the war and its economic consequences. The good news is that job growth and GDP growth are still strong, and inflation will drop quickly if the war is ended now.”

Sacks’s inflation call remained a forecast contingent on the war ending. The disagreement wasn’t about one dataset; it was about who the aggregate gains reached.

How did family wealth change from 2022 to 2025?

The Federal Reserve report Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2022 to 2025 provides the long-run baseline, not a 2026 snapshot. The source material gives no sample size for the Fed datasets or sentiment survey and identifies no revisions; only the September earnings estimate carries a preliminary label.

From 2022 to 2025, real median U.S. family net worth rose 2%, while mean net worth rose 7%. The gains concentrated near the top: Older families and top earners posted some of the largest increases.

Families with less wealth, including young families, renters and families without a high school diploma, saw wealth decline. Families 75 and older saw notable increases in net worth, and retirement income played a key role.

Stock ownership widened that split. The share of families holding stock slipped from 58% to 56%, and the decline came from families outside the top 10% of earners. Among families that held stock, median holdings grew 36%, from $56,900 to $77,400.

Retirement accounts reached 54.9% of families, with a median balance of $106,000, up 11%. For homeowners, median net housing value rose 5% to $230,000.

In other words, balance sheets improved most for families already positioned to own stocks, retirement savings and housing.

Which households pulled ahead in 2026?

Recent Fed distributional data showed the split accelerating in the second quarter of 2026. Households 70 and older held 33.6% of household net worth. Their net worth grew 17.9% from a year earlier, the fastest among age groups, while stock and mutual-fund holdings rose 33%. Households under 40 held just 6.5% of household net worth.

Retirees with a brokerage account, a 401(k) and a paid-down home have risen with the market. Renters living on wages have paid higher prices from paychecks that remained flat after inflation, leaving them less able to build wealth at the same pace.

Many retirees own few assets and depend mostly on Social Security. Its 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment will increase the average retired worker’s monthly check to $2,170 in 2027.

That is the mechanism: retirement status alone did not create the split; market ownership did.

What should near-retirees watch?

Near-retirees should total their stock, retirement-account and home-equity wealth, then estimate how much a market drop could erase during their first years of withdrawals. A poor market can coincide with the start of withdrawals and make selling harder.

A sponsored Fisher Investments guide in the source promotes retirement-income planning, including costs, cash-flow sources and safe annual withdrawals through strong and weak markets.

Over the next two quarters, watch real hourly earnings and the next Fed release’s measure of older households’ wealth share; those figures will show whether the wage-and-asset gap is widening or narrowing.