Again, that's not taking into account that somebody with less than $1,000 in a savings account may have many times more than that in home equity, 401k savings or available credit.
Since becoming an empty nester, I've managed to put just over 6 months of living expenses into my savings account but when the children were living with me and expenses were high, I still had plenty to draw upon when I had an emergency expense such as a major car repair, a new roof for my house, or a busted water heater. I could put it on my credit card (and pay it down quickly), take out a home equity loan or take out a 401k loan. None of those options were ideal but I never had to really worry that much about emergency expenses as I had options.
Now there are some who truly have no safety net with an emergency expense but it is far less than 56% of the people.
The article excluded those considerations from consideration. A $1000 emergency expense is not what those savings vehicles are for.
You make some very good points.
Another thing to consider is so many young people have federal student loans with very high balances and they have not been making any payments on these since March 2020. I have read that the percentage of borrowers that have continued making payments is about 10% which means obviously 90% are not making payments. This has freed up personal income for those individuals to pay off other debt. And as old habits are hard to break when May 1st rolls around and with it demands to start paying back this debt, look for the democrats to place the carrot of loan forgiveness back into the faces of student loan borrowers. In short, there goes the rest of any excess savings.
The Obama administration instituted a policy called capitalization into federal student loans which adds interest accumulated while the student is in school and during the 9 month grace period after leaving school, that interest is added to the principal. The government could reverse that practice and just charge borrowers based on their principal amount for far less tax payer money but that would take the issue away from the democrats in future elections and they have no intention of doing that.
My prediction: congress and the administration will keep things as they are and make this an issue for the 2022 and 2024 election.