What impact has COVID had on financial well being?

The Commission for Financial Capability recently published a survey of how the COVID crisis has impacted the personal & household finances of New Zealanders.
The survey highlighted that while c. 26% of households were financially secure, around 34% were already experiencing financial difficulties. More than half of this group had already missed a payment (household bills or credit cards) Many of this group were already in some degree of trouble before the crisis hit. 38% of them were already unemployed & c. 1/3 were had some form of insecure employment as their main source of income.**

Similar surveys in the UK & Norway seem to show pretty much the same trend, although with lower percentages in potential difficulties (UK 28% & Norway 8%) I am really interested in how the some of the bigger employment related demographic trends, such as the gig economy, zero hours contracts & income disparities, are impacting consumers abilities to continue to fund both big ticket & discretionary spend.**
A recent chart from the St Louis Fed, FRED - US personal savings showed that, unsurprisingly, US personal savings has spiked. As of March 2020 it was up to 13.1%. Now to be fair, this is not even close to an all time high – back in the 1960’s & 1970’s it was steadily up above 10%, but more recently its been c. 3-6%.
During Q1-2020 conference Calls, many companies were cutting back on capex & investment to preserve cashflow.**
I believe we are witnessing a typical state of the art Behavioral Finance

This is behavioral finance at its best in April:

Americans are SAVING ! Which is quite rare in the American Economic History.

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