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Americans stepped up their participation in retirement plans and saw their savings grow in recent years, a new analysis from the Federal Reserve finds.
The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances released a report on Friday detailing changes in U.S. family finances from 2022 to 2025 found that enrollment in retirement plans ticked up to 54.9% of families in 2025 – an increase of 0.6 percentage points since 2022.
The conditional median value of retirement accounts rose 11% from 2022 to 2025, reaching $106,000; while the conditional mean or average value rose 23% to $451,100 as of last year.
Retirement accounts remained the second-most commonly held type of financial asset among American households, including individual retirement accounts and certain employer-sponsored plans, such as 401(k), 403(b) and thrift savings accounts.
AMERICANS’ AVERAGE 401(K) BALANCE REACHES RECORD HIGH, FIDELITY DATA SHOWS
Retirement savings balances increased for nearly all age groups from 2022 to 2025, the Fed’s survey of consumer finances showed.
The 55-64 age group saw average balances rise from $588,500 in 2022 to $670,200 in 2025; while the 45-54 age group’s retirement savings rose from $342,700 to $415,800 in that period.
The 35-44 cohort’s average retirement savings balances increased from $154,800 to $182,400. While the under 35 age group’s average savings fell from $53,800 to $48,400 from 2022 to 2025, they remained higher than the $43,800 average in 2016 and $38,300 in 2019.
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The Federal Reserve’s analysis noted that defined contribution and individual retirement account (IRA) plans were much more common than defined benefit plans, with enrollment rising from around 50% among the youngest families to about 65% for the oldest families in 2025.
It found that while families in all parts of the age distribution experienced some gains in defined contribution and IRA plans over the last decade, the biggest increase came from the youngest age group, which had participation increase from 42% in 2016 to near 50% in 2025.
Nearly all families owned at least one type of financial asset, as 98.9% of families in 2025 owned at least one transaction account, certificate of deposit, savings bond, other bond, stock, pooled investment fund, retirement account, cash value life insurance or other managed asset.
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That figure is little changed from 2022 and transaction accounts – including checking, savings, money market and call accounts, as well as prepaid debit cards – was the most commonly held category of financial asset in 2025, with an ownership rate of 98.7%.
Direct ownership of stocks declined from 2022 to 2025, falling from 21% of families to 19%. In 2022, the Fed’s survey of consumer finances saw direct ownership of stocks rise six percentage points from 2019, which was the largest change between surveys on record.
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The latest findings suggest that while some of the 2022 increase in direct stock ownership was temporary, the 2025 reading was still well above the 2019 rate of 15.2%. Conditional median stock holdings also rebounded from $16,400 to $30,000, which almost erased the fall in median stock holdings from 2019 to 2022.
