BlackRock chief investment officer Rick Rieder says the US economy is continuing to grow and absorb shocks, but that strength is increasingly concentrated among a narrow group of asset-owning Americans.
Speaking in a new Bloomberg interview, Rieder says many investors are misreading the health of the economy by relying on outdated assumptions about how growth and employment interact.
He explains that today’s economy looks fundamentally different from past cycles, with services and asset ownership playing a much larger role than traditional goods production and broad labor participation.
“I think people don’t look at jobs and look at this economy like it was 20, 30 years ago. You have an extraordinarily different economy, service-oriented versus goods-oriented.”
While Rieder says key pillars of growth remain intact, particularly capital spending and consumer demand, which continue to support overall activity, he notes that the strength is not evenly distributed.
“You’ve got CapEx that is robust and will continue. You’ve got consumption that is robust. But it’s driven by wealthier, older savers. It’s part of why the interest rate tool is not nearly as effective as it used to be, because that cohort is doing extremely well.
Where the burden today is, is in terms of low income, small business, and younger people.”
Despite the strain, Rieder says weakness in the labor market does not automatically translate into a broad economic slowdown under today’s structure. Aggregate spending power is increasingly tied to asset ownership rather than employment levels.
“When you aggregate the data, and I hear a lot of people talking about, ‘Oh my God, the jobs market is softening, the economy is going to come under pressure…’ This is an economy that’s more asset-oriented than labor-oriented. I don’t want to understate this. We have a problem, too, which is that we need to employ more people. But that cohort isn’t that much in terms of aggregate spend.
So the economy can continue to motor along.”
Data shows that the US unemployment rate stood at 4.4% as of December 2025. But Rieder said the figure soars to 8.3% for young people aged 20-24 years old. Meanwhile, Bank of America found that 24% of Americans spend over 95% of their paycheck to cover necessities, leaving them with little to nothing to purchase other things.
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