We get a lot of economic news these days, from jobs to inflation news.  This is a rather scary report from CNBC:

More consumers are leaning on credit cards to afford increasingly expensive necessities such as food and rent.

That helped propel total credit card debt to a record $930.6 billion at the end of 2022, an 18.5% spike from a year earlier, according to the latest quarterly report by TransUnion. The average balance rose to $5,805 over that same period.

At this rate, households are nearing a "breaking point," according to a separate study by WalletHub.

Using the Great Recession as a guide, the projected breaking point is the level of household credit card debt that will become unsustainable for most people, according to Jill Gonzalez, an analyst at WalletHub.

"It's when people won't be able to keep up with their bills," she said. "We're inching closer and closer to that breaking point."

People using credit cards to pay food and rent?  How long can that last?  Not very long, to say the least.

What's behind all of this is inflation, or prices going up faster than wages.  I think that this is the reason that Friday's jobs report does not connect with people.  Yes, we saw more jobs, but it's taking more and more money from those jobs to make ends meet.  Here in North Texas, for example, gasoline went from $2.99 to $3.19 in a few days.  Car insurance is up 23.8%, and nobody is getting raises like that!

It's a very strange economy, and a situation that creates the anxiety that we see from coast to coast.

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Image via Pxfuel.