Tim Duy, Columnist

The Alarm Over Consumer Debt Is Overblown

Consumers are really still deleveraging.

June 30, 2017 at 12:00 PM UTC

Tim Duy is a professor of practice and senior director of the Oregon Economic Forum at the University of Oregon and the author of Tim Duy's Fed Watch.

Within reason.
Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

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There is no shortage of worrisome articles about consumer debt. And expect to see such concerns continue now that household debt surpassed the peak of the last cycle:

It’s probably not going down anytime soon. But have consumers really levered up since the end of the recession? No. The raw levels are misleading. Household debt as a percentage of disposable income continues to fall: