Nearly one-quarter of Americans ended 2020 worse off financially than they were 12 months ago, according to results from a Federal Reserve survey released yesterday, The Hill reported. A survey conducted by the Fed in November found that 24 percent of Americans said their financial standing took a hit amid the pandemic, 10 percentage points higher than at the end of 2019. The percentage of Americans reporting a decline in their finances was the highest recorded by the Fed’s annual Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED) since 2014. "This new survey gives us valuable details about the financial challenges families have faced during the pandemic," Fed Governor Michelle Bowman said in a statement. "Even as the economy has improved, we can certainly see that some are still struggling, especially those who lost their jobs and those with less education, many of whom fell further behind." The U.S. economy is expected to bounce back strongly from the pandemic-driven recession, which caused the quickest and steepest economic decline since the Great Depression. Even so, millions of Americans who lost their jobs or faced other financial hardships during the pandemic are facing much steeper roads to recovery. While nearly one-in-four Americans reported being worse off financially, that ratio is far higher for Black and Hispanic Americans.
