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Two different things both get called the 'savings rate' - and they answer different questions.
When you hear "the U.S. savings rate is at 4%," two completely different things might be meant - and the difference matters. The first is the interest rate banks pay on savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs). The second is the percentage of after-tax income that American households as a whole are not spending. Same name, different concepts, both important.
Two different things both get called the 'savings rate' - and they answer different questions.
When you hear "the U.S. savings rate is at 4%," two completely different things might be meant - and the difference matters. The first is the interest rate banks pay on savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs). The second is the percentage of after-tax income that American households as a whole are not spending. Same name, different concepts, both important.
The first one - bank deposit rates - is what your savings account actually earns. If you have a savings account at a big bank, you might earn 0.05% or 0.50% annually. If you have one at an online bank or in a high-yield savings account, you might earn 4% or 5%. CD rates depend on how long you lock the money up. These are interest rates, expressed as an annual yield, and they are what most people mean colloquially when they say "the savings rate."
The second one - the Personal Saving Rate, or PSAVERT - is a macroeconomic number published by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It measures saving in a national-accounting sense: take after-tax income for all U.S. households together, subtract everything they spent on goods and services, and divide what's left by their after-tax income. The result is a percentage. In April 2020 it spiked to roughly 32% (about 33% as first reported) as pandemic stimulus checks landed and consumer spending collapsed. In the mid-2000s, just before the 2008 financial crisis, it fell to around 3%. It tells you how much of national income is being set aside rather than consumed.
The two move differently because they answer different questions. Bank deposit rates move with the Federal Reserve's policy rate. The Personal Saving Rate moves with consumer confidence, income growth, household debt levels, and major one-off events (pandemic stimulus, tax-law changes, recessions). They can move in opposite directions for years at a time - deposit rates can be falling while the saving rate is rising, or vice versa. Conflating them in news commentary is a common mistake.
FDIC national deposit rates (what banks pay) vs BEA PSAVERT (% of disposable income not spent).
Bank deposit rates are tracked by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) under the National Rates and Rate Caps program. FDIC publishes national deposit rates monthly, on the third Monday of each month based on data as of the prior month-end, computed as a deposit-weighted average across all insured depository institutions and credit unions for which data are available. The averages are broken out by product: savings accounts, money-market accounts, interest-bearing checking, and CDs by tenor (1-month, 3-month, 6-month, 12-month, 24-month, 36-month, 48-month, 60-month). FDIC also publishes "rate caps" - the maximum rates that less-than-well-capitalized institutions are permitted to offer.
FRED carries the current FDIC National Rates for CDs under $100,000 under the tickers NDR12MCD (12-month), NDR6MCD (6-month), and NDR3MCD (3-month), updated monthly; FDIC's own website is the authoritative source. The national averages mask wide dispersion: at any given time the headline national-average 12-month CD rate might be 1.5%, while online banks are advertising 5% and large depositories are paying near zero on basic savings.
The Personal Saving Rate (PSAVERT) is published monthly by the Bureau of Economic Analysis as part of Personal Income and Outlays, released around the last business day of the month with one-month lag. The formula is: PSAVERT = (Disposable Personal Income − Personal Outlays) / Disposable Personal Income × 100. Disposable Personal Income (DPI) is income after taxes. Personal Outlays equal personal consumption expenditures plus personal interest payments plus personal current transfer payments (to government, plus net transfers to the rest of the world). What's left over is personal saving; expressing it as a fraction of DPI gives the rate.
A key thing about PSAVERT: it's an accounting residual derived from BEA's National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), not a direct measure of cash flowing into savings accounts. Saving in the BEA definition includes pension and 401(k) contributions, contributions to IRAs, the imputed saving from owner-occupied housing (calculated as if homeowners paid themselves rent), purchases of life-insurance reserves, and other forms of asset accumulation that have nothing to do with bank deposits. A household paying down credit-card debt is also "saving" in BEA's sense.
This is why the two series can diverge. The Personal Saving Rate spiked to ~32% in April 2020 because pandemic stimulus payments dropped income simultaneously with a collapse in consumer spending (lockdowns prevented purchases). Bank deposit rates stayed near zero because the Fed had cut to zero. Conversely, in 2022–24 the Fed raised rates aggressively and bank deposit rates climbed (slowly, depending on the bank), but the Personal Saving Rate fell to historically low levels as households drew down accumulated pandemic savings.
Historical perspective: U.S. Personal Saving Rate averaged around 7–10% from the 1950s through the 1980s, declined to a trough of roughly 3% in the mid-2000s (the peak housing-wealth era; earlier data vintages showed even lower), recovered modestly post-GFC, spiked extraordinarily during 2020–21 (pandemic), and declined to 3–5% range in 2023–25. Bank deposit rates over the same span moved roughly with the Fed funds rate but with substantial lag and dispersion.
Deposit rate sources beyond FDIC: Bankrate, NerdWallet, DepositAccounts, and DoctorOfCredit aggregate retail-facing deposit offers. The high-yield savings tier is dominated by online-only banks (Marcus by Goldman Sachs, Ally, Synchrony, Discover, and others). Large traditional depository institutions pay much less than headline-grabbing online accounts, which is why the FDIC national average understates what's available to a rate-shopping consumer.
FDIC: NDR12MCD / NDR6MCD / NDR3MCD (CDs under $100K) via FRED; PSAVERT monthly, BEA via FRED.
FDIC National Rates and Rate Caps: the authoritative source is FDIC's website (https://www.fdic.gov/resources/bankers/national-rates/). FRED carries the current monthly FDIC series - NDR12MCD (12-month CD under $100,000), NDR6MCD (6-month), NDR3MCD (3-month), NDR24MCD (24-month), NDR60MCD (60-month), SNDR (savings), MMNDR (money market) - along with the matching rate-cap series (e.g., NRC12MCD). The discontinued 2009–2021 weekly non-jumbo series (CD12NRNJ, CD6NRNJ, CD3NRNJ, SAVNRNJ) remain on FRED for history. FRED updates shortly after FDIC's monthly release; FDIC's website is the primary source.
FDIC defines non-jumbo as deposits under $100,000 and jumbo as $100,000+. The split reflects the historical $100,000 deposit-insurance threshold and FDIC's product tiers; jumbo rates are typically modestly higher than non-jumbo at the same tenor because larger balances command better pricing.
Deposit beta - the pass-through from Fed funds to bank deposit rates - is a key practitioner concept. Beta is typically asymmetric: faster on the way down (banks cut deposit rates quickly when the Fed cuts to protect net interest margin), slower on the way up (banks lag rate hikes to maintain margin). Across the 2022–23 hiking cycle, large-bank deposit beta on consumer savings and money-market accounts was unusually slow - major banks took until late 2023 to materially lift retail deposit pricing, while online banks (Marcus, Ally, Synchrony, Discover, Capital One 360, Bask Bank, others) captured disproportionate flow of rate-sensitive deposits. The 2023 regional-banking stress (Silicon Valley Bank, Signature, First Republic) was partly a consequence of the asymmetry - rate-sensitive depositors moved cash from low-paying banks to Treasury bills, money-market funds, or higher-paying competitors.
Deposit beta has structural shifters: (1) money-market fund alternatives - when MMF yields are high relative to bank deposits, depositors shift out of banks, forcing banks to raise; (2) regulatory liquidity ratios (LCR, NSFR) - depository institutions need stable funding to satisfy regulatory requirements, providing some pricing discipline floor; (3) brokered deposit rules - banks heavily reliant on brokered deposits face higher rate pressure; (4) bank-by-bank deposit franchises - banks with sticky consumer-deposit bases (e.g., long-tenured branch customers) can sustain lower deposit pricing than online-only competitors.
Personal Saving Rate (PSAVERT) detail: published monthly by BEA in the Personal Income and Outlays release (typically last business day of month, 8:30 AM ET, for the prior reference month). Computed from NIPA Tables 2.1 and 2.6. Revisions can be substantial; the annual NIPA update (released in September in recent years; comprehensive updates come roughly every five years) sometimes revises PSAVERT by 1–2 percentage points across multiple years. The September 2024 annual update marked up the 2022–2024 saving rate by roughly 1–2 percentage points, driven by upward revisions to measured personal income.
PSAVERT components: total saving in NIPA = personal saving + business saving + government saving. Personal saving narrowly = DPI − personal outlays. Personal outlays include personal consumption expenditures (the dominant component), interest paid by households (mortgage interest, credit-card interest), and personal current transfer payments (a small item - payments to government such as donations, fees, and fines, plus net transfers to the rest of the world, mostly remittances). PCE is itself a Fisher-formula index - see PCE vs Core PCE explainer.
Flow of Funds (Federal Reserve Z.1) Saving: a separate measure of personal saving, published quarterly by the Federal Reserve in the Financial Accounts of the United States. FOF saving differs from NIPA saving by accounting treatment - FOF emphasizes asset-flow changes, NIPA emphasizes income-outlays residual. The two can disagree by several percentage points; researchers comparing them need to handle the methodology gap carefully. (FOF tickers: Z.1 Table F.6, line series.)
The practical implication of methodology differences: when a journalist or politician says "the U.S. saving rate is X," the appropriate follow-up question is which series and what definition. If the discussion is about bank deposits and consumer financial health, FDIC deposit data is appropriate. If the discussion is about macro household behavior, PSAVERT is appropriate. If the discussion is about wealth accumulation in retirement accounts and home equity, FOF is more appropriate.
Geographic dispersion: deposit rates vary regionally, especially in CDs. State-level variation in non-jumbo CD rates can run 50–100 bps. Local bank competition matters more than national averages would suggest. The FDIC publishes only a single national average rate per product, so regional dispersion has to be observed through commercial aggregators like Bankrate and DepositAccounts; the National Credit Union Administration publishes national (not regional) credit-union vs bank rate comparisons.
PSAVERT is a NIPA accounting residual; deposit rates lag Fed Funds asymmetrically (sticky deposit beta).
Deposit beta literature: Drechsler, Savov & Schnabl (2017, QJE) - "The Deposits Channel of Monetary Policy" - is the canonical reference for how monetary policy transmits through bank deposit pricing. Their key insight: banks with deeper local-market deposit franchises have lower deposit betas because their depositors are less rate-sensitive (geographic and relationship stickiness). Deposit-pricing power varies systematically with bank business model.
The 2022–23 deposit-beta anomaly: during the FOMC's 525-bp hiking cycle, aggregate consumer-savings and MMA deposit betas at the largest banks ran roughly 0.10–0.20 - meaning depositors saw only ~50–100 bps of the 525 bps of Fed hikes pass through. Online banks ran 0.50+. The dispersion drove the rate-sensitive-deposit migration from large-bank consumer-savings to MMFs and online banks during 2022–23, which was a contributing factor in the regional-banking stress of March 2023 (SVB, Signature, First Republic). The Fed's subsequent BTFP (Bank Term Funding Program) was a liquidity backstop, not a deposit-pricing intervention.
MMF dynamics: Money Market Fund AUM is the relevant alternative to bank deposits for rate-sensitive cash. Government MMFs (which dominate retail flow) track overnight policy rates - the overnight reverse repo (ON RRP) rate and SOFR (Secured Overnight Financing Rate) - closely, with net yields typically running within a few tens of basis points of those rates after fund expenses. MMF AUM grew from ~$4.5T (early 2022) to ~$6.5T (late 2024) during the Fed tightening cycle. A substantial portion of that ~$2T growth was rate-sensitive cash migrating from bank deposits (which fell by several hundred billion dollars over the period), with the rest coming from reinvested yield and institutional inflows. The ICI's weekly MMF data are the primary source.
Monetary policy transmission through deposits - broader research: Berlin & Mester (1999) on core deposits and relationship lending (rate-insensitive deposit funding lets banks smooth loan rates for borrowers); Yankov (2014) on search frictions and price dispersion in retail deposit markets; Drechsler-Savov-Schnabl (2017, 2018) on the deposits channel and bank-level pricing power. Modern research extensions consider digital-banking adoption (online banks have effectively zero local-franchise pricing power because they can be accessed nationally with one click) and demographic-rotation (younger depositors are systematically more rate-sensitive and online-bank-adoptive than older cohorts).
PSAVERT NIPA mechanics: BEA's NIPA Handbook is the primary methodology reference - Chapter 5 covers Personal Consumption Expenditures, and the personal income and outlays chapters cover the saving-rate components. The saving rate is reported in BEA Table 2.1 (Personal Income and Its Disposition) and Table 2.6 (Personal Income and Its Disposition, Monthly). Saving is computed as DPI minus personal outlays; personal outlays = personal consumption expenditures + personal interest payments + personal current transfer payments (to government, plus net transfers to the rest of the world).
Key accounting subtleties in PSAVERT: (1) imputed rent on owner-occupied housing - homeowners are treated as paying themselves rent, which adds to both income and consumption; the net effect on income is the homeowner's net rental income after expenses and depreciation; (2) employer contributions to pension funds count as employee compensation (so are part of DPI) and as saving (because they accumulate in pension reserves rather than being consumed); (3) capital gains are NOT included in either DPI or saving in NIPA - only the income earned (dividends, interest) flows through; (4) inflation adjustment matters - when CPI-equivalent inflation runs high, nominal saving and nominal income both inflate, but the saving rate can move depending on the relative timing of price and income adjustment.
This is why "low saving rate" in 2022–24 wasn't necessarily a sign of household distress - wealth accumulation through retirement accounts and home equity continued even as the PSAVERT measure stayed low. BEA's September 2024 annual update actually marked up PSAVERT for 2022–2024 by roughly 1–2 percentage points, driven by upward revisions to personal income source data - the 2024Q2 rate moved from 3.3% to 5.2%.
FOF (Flow of Funds) saving comparison: the Federal Reserve's Z.1 release Table F.6 has saving by sector, broken down differently from NIPA. FOF measures saving as the change in net worth attributable to current saving (excluding holding gains). FOF and NIPA personal saving often disagree by 1–3 percentage points; the difference is reconciled in the Federal Reserve's Z.1 table on the derivation of measures of personal saving and in the jointly published BEA/Federal Reserve Integrated Macroeconomic Accounts. Most published commentary uses NIPA PSAVERT because of its monthly frequency.
For research, the BEA Personal Income and Outlays release (monthly), BEA NIPA Handbook (methodology), Federal Reserve Z.1 (quarterly Flow of Funds), and FDIC Quarterly Banking Profile (quarterly deposit composition) are the primary sources. The BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey provides micro-level household saving and spending data that complements the macro-level PSAVERT.
Research caution: comparing the U.S. PSAVERT to other countries' personal saving rates requires careful methodology alignment. SNA (System of National Accounts) and NIPA have important definitional differences in how they treat pension contributions, owner-occupied housing, and durable-goods purchases. Cross-country saving-rate comparisons in WEO and OECD publications use harmonized SNA definitions but should be checked for methodology footnotes.