Educational content. This material is for informational and educational purposes only and is not financial, investment, tax, or legal advice.

← White Papers · White paper · Sep 8, 2026

Rutherford Finance · Research Fed SCF 2022 · Vanguard 2024 · Fidelity Q3 2025

The American household,
by the numbers.

A population-level view of income, net worth, and where households actually hold their money — employer retirement plans, individually held retirement accounts, and taxable brokerage. Select an age bracket and toggle between the typical household (median) and the average (mean), which a small number of very wealthy households pull sharply upward.

Median income

$70,300

Mean: $141,900

Median net worth

$192,700

Mean: $1.06M

Have a retirement acct

54%

~46% have none

Have a brokerage acct

21%

Taxable investing

Top 10% net worth

$1.94M

Top 1%: $11.6M+

Explore by age

Age = household reference person · 2022 SCF

Median income vs. median net worth by age income net worth

What income & wealth actually track

The biggest non-age drivers · 2022 SCF

Click any bar to read its detail. Net worth by characteristic of the household reference person.

Where the money sits

Employer, individual, and taxable accounts

Account ownership — share of all households

Ownership ≠ value. 98.6% have a bank account; only 1 in 5 hold a taxable brokerage account, and just over half have any retirement account at all.

The three buckets

Employer · Individual · Taxable

Employer retirement (DC): 401(k), 403(b), TSP. Among families with an active workplace plan, 63.9% now have a defined-contribution plan only — up from 37.5% in 1992 as pensions vanished (DB-only fell to 15.6%).

Individually held retirement (IRAs): tracked separately, but most IRA money is rolled over out of old 401(k)s — so it's largely former employer money now self-directed.

Taxable brokerage / direct stock: ~21% of households. Among households that own stock directly, the median holding is just $15,000.

The 401(k), up close

Vanguard recordkeeper data · year-end 2024 · ~5M participants

Survey data covers all households. Recordkeeper data covers only people who hold a plan with that provider — real balances, far larger sample, but it excludes everyone without employer coverage. That's why these numbers run higher than the SCF, and why the median/mean gap is so wide.

Age	Average 401(k)	Median 401(k)	Mean ÷ Median

Vanguard all-participant average: $148,153. Fidelity Q3 2025 all-ages average 401(k): $144,400 (24.8M participants). Average contribution rate: 7.7% of pay.

How to read these figures

Median vs. mean

The mean net worth ($1.06M) is nearly 5.5× the median ($192,700) — a handful of ultra-wealthy households drag the average up. For "typical household," always use the median.

Conditional vs. unconditional

Most balance figures here are conditional — averaged only over households that own the account. Across all households (including the ~46% with zero retirement savings), the real medians are far lower.

Self- vs. professionally-managed

No public dataset cleanly tags balances by who manages them. The closest proxy is IRA/taxable (often self-directed) vs. employer DC (recordkeeper-administered), plus separate advisor-usage rates. This dimension is not directly observable in public data.

Data vintage

The SCF runs every 3 years; 2022 is the most recent (released Oct 2023). The 2025 wave won't publish until late 2026. Recordkeeper data (Vanguard/Fidelity) updates quarterly to annually and is more current.

Important. This white paper is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, tax, or legal advice, or an offer or solicitation of any kind. Figures are drawn from the cited public sources and believed accurate as of publication but are not guaranteed. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Please consult a qualified professional about your own situation.

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