American families are parking more money in retirement accounts and signing up for workplace plans at higher rates, according to new Federal Reserve survey data covering household finances through 2025.
The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances shows retirement plan enrollment edged up to 54.9% of families in 2025, a gain of 0.6 percentage points since 2022, while the typical account balance and the average balance both moved higher over the same stretch.
Fox Business reported the findings from the Fed survey released Friday, which tracks how U.S. households hold and grow financial assets, including IRAs and employer-sponsored plans such as 401(k), 403(b), and thrift savings accounts.
Retirement accounts remained the second-most commonly held type of financial asset among American households. That pattern matters for taxpayers who fund their own futures instead of waiting on someone else to do it.
Among families that hold retirement accounts, the conditional median value rose 11% from 2022 to 2025 and reached $106,000. The conditional mean, or average, value rose 23% to $451,100 as of last year.
Those two measures tell different stories. The median captures the middle household with an account. The average pulls higher because larger balances at the top of the distribution lift the mean. Both moved in the same direction: up.
Older working-age groups posted the biggest dollar gains. Average balances for the 55-64 age group rose from $588,500 in 2022 to $670,200 in 2025. The 45-54 group climbed from $342,700 to $415,800. The 35-44 cohort increased from $154,800 to $182,400.
Households under 35 saw average retirement savings fall from $53,800 to $48,400 between 2022 and 2025. Even so, that figure stayed above the $43,800 average in 2016 and the $38,300 average in 2019. Younger savers still sit ahead of where their peers stood earlier in the last decade.
Defined contribution plans and IRAs are far more common than traditional defined benefit pensions. Enrollment in those contribution-style and IRA plans runs from around 50% among the youngest families to about 65% for the oldest families in 2025.
The youngest age group’s participation in defined contribution and IRA plans rose from 42% in 2016 to near 50% in 2025. That long climb shows more early-career households getting into the habit of saving through the tools private employers and markets actually offer.
Pensions that promise a set check for life still exist in some corners of government and older private plans. Most American families now build retirement wealth through accounts they own and fund over time. The Fed numbers line up with that shift.
In 2025, 98.9% of families owned at least one type of financial asset. That list includes transaction accounts, certificates of deposit, savings bonds, other bonds, stocks, pooled investment funds, retirement accounts, cash-value life insurance, or other managed assets.
Transaction accounts were the most common category, with a 98.7% ownership rate in 2025. Checking and savings accounts are the entry point. Retirement accounts sit right behind as a core store of long-term savings.
Direct ownership of stocks slipped from 21% of families in 2022 to 19% in 2025. That share remains well above the 15.2% rate in 2019. Between 2019 and 2022, direct stock ownership jumped six percentage points, the largest change between surveys on record in the material Fox Business covered.
Among families that do own stocks directly, conditional median holdings rebounded from $16,400 to $30,000. Fewer households held shares in their own names, but the typical stake among those who did nearly doubled.
The Survey of Consumer Finances is the Fed’s broad look at family balance sheets. It is not a monthly jobs print or a single-company 401(k) snapshot. It measures how many households participate and how large the balances look when the survey is taken.
Fox Business also flagged a related headline that Americans’ average 401(k) balance reached a record high in separate Fidelity data. The Fed survey itself is the anchor here: more families in plans, higher median and mean retirement account values, and stronger balances for mid-career and near-retirement age groups.
Younger households show a softer average balance over the latest three-year window, yet their long-run participation in contribution plans and IRAs is higher than a decade ago. That mix is worth watching without treating one cohort’s dip as the whole story.
No Fed official quotes appear in the coverage beyond the paraphrased statistics. The report’s operative findings are the enrollment rate, the median and mean account values, the age-group averages, the rise in younger participation since 2016, and the broad ownership of financial assets.
For families who show up, contribute, and leave the money invested, the path is still the same one that built middle-class nest eggs for decades: steady deposits, compounding, and time in the market through vehicles they control.
When more households join retirement plans and balances rise, that is not an accident of slogans. It is what thrift and ownership look like on a national balance sheet.