Median family income rose 7% in Fed survey as share behind on loan payments nears 20%

Median family income in the United States rose 7% between the Federal Reserve's 2022 and 2025 surveys of household finances, to $82,200 in inflation-adjusted dollars, while the share of families that reported being behind on loan payments climbed from about 12% to almost 20%, according to the Fed's Survey of Consumer Finances and its summary report.

What happened

The Federal Reserve Board released the 2025 survey results on Friday, October 9. The survey has been run every three years since 1989 and asks a representative sample of families what they own, what they owe and how they bank. Dollar amounts in the report are adjusted to 2025 dollars.

Real median family income, measured for the year before the survey, rose 7% to $82,200, while real mean family income fell 6% to $145,200. The Fed's staff said families at the lower ends of the income and net worth distributions saw modest gains while those at the upper ends saw declines, and that income inequality decreased slightly.

Real median net worth rose 2% to $215,900, and real mean net worth rose 7% to $1.24 million. Computed from those two figures, mean net worth was about 5.8 times the median ($1,241,500 divided by $215,900), a gap that shows how much a relatively small number of wealthy families lifts the average.

Why it matters

The report describes what it calls a moderate expansion with elevated inflation. Over the three years between the surveys, real gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of around 2.5%, the unemployment rate rose to 4.2% from 3.7%, and consumer prices rose at an average annual rate of 3.6%. Against that backdrop, the Fed's staff wrote, most families had moderate increases in income and net worth, while an increasing subset appeared to be experiencing financial stress.

Gains in wealth were not spread evenly. For families in the lowest fifth of the usual income distribution, median net worth fell 6% and mean net worth fell 4%, while for families in the top tenth median net worth grew 31% to $3,669,900. Between 2019 and 2022 net worth had grown broadly across the distribution, the report said.

Debt and the burden of paying it

The share of families with any debt was stable at 77%, and median and mean debt outstanding were unchanged. What changed was the cost of carrying it. The median debt payment-to-income ratio was 15.4%, up 2.0 percentage points from 2022, which the report said may be related to higher interest rates on mortgages and consumer loans. The total debt-to-income ratio rose to 94.9% from 89.4%, an increase of 5.5 percentage points (computed).

The share of families whose debt payments exceeded 40% of income rose to 8.6% from 6.5%, an increase of 2.1 percentage points (computed) to a level last seen in the 2013 survey.

Home loans and cards both contributed. About 42% of families had debt secured by their primary residence in both surveys, but the median amount among them rose to $183,600 from $170,200. About 45% of families carried a credit card balance after their last payment, unchanged, while median card debt rose $150 to $3,100 and mean card debt rose $1,300 to $8,000. Student debt moved the other way: 20% of families had it, down 2 percentage points, and median balances fell 5% to $25,600.

Behind on payments

The clearest sign of strain in the survey is payment behavior. The share of families that reported being behind on loan payments rose from about 12% to almost 20%, and more than 8% said they were two months late or more, up from 5%. The Fed's staff said families were more likely to be behind than at any point since the 2010 survey.

Access to credit looks different. In 2025, 10.1% of families said they had been turned down for credit in the previous 12 months, unchanged from 2022, while the share that did not apply for fear of being turned down rose slightly to 13.5% from 12.9%. The report did not attribute the rise in late payments to a single cause. It described the increases in the debt-to-income and payment-to-income ratios as consistent with it.

Another measure moved in the opposite direction. The median leverage ratio, which compares a family's debt with its assets, was 26.9% for families with debt and has declined steadily since the 2013 survey. The report said borrowers look less fragile when debts are scaled to assets than when they are scaled to income.

Housing, stocks and uncertainty

Homeownership was 66%, about unchanged from 2022, and the median net housing value of homeowners rose to $230,000 from $218,900. The report said housing affordability remained near its historical low, with the median home worth more than 4.5 times median family income.

Participation in the stock market fell to 56% from 58%, with the decline driven by families outside the top 10% of income, although among families that held stock the median holding grew 36% to $77,400. The share of families that did not have a good idea of their income for the next year reached 37%, a new high for the survey.

Earlier FinanceInTime reporting covered the monthly gap between inflation and pay growth and the rise in student-loan delinquencies. The survey adds a three-year view of the same pressures at the household level.

What to watch

The survey is conducted every three years, so the next comparison with the 2025 results will come with the following survey. In the meantime, the Fed's monthly consumer credit report and its published chartbook give a way to see whether the payment pressures the survey describes continue. The survey reflects families' answers at one point in time, and the report's measures of late payment and debt burden do not say why individual families fell behind.