Americans Still Have a Lot of Cash

Just before the pandemic, in the fourth quarter of 2019, American households held about $1 trillion in what was effectively cash—currency and accounts against which checks could be written.

- By Justin Fox

By the second quarter of this year, the most recent period for which these statistics are available from the Federal Reserve, the amount had leapt to $4.7 trillion. As should be clear from the accompanying chart (which is adjusted for inflation and also includes a couple hundred billion dollars in nonprofit organization holdings because the combined statistics go back much further), nothing like this has happened in the past 70 years— although consumer spending statistics point to something similar having occurred during World War II.