WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — There’s one number you need to know to understand why people are bullish on the U.S. economy: $99 trillion.

The rise in the stock markets and the increased value of housing have pushed the market value of assets owned by all U.S. households to a record $99 trillion at the end of March, according to a report released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday.

Also read: Corporate debt continues to mount as household wealth climbs

Fortunately, unlike what happened during the dot-com and housing bubbles, the rapid increase in wealth over the past five years has not been matched by a large expansion of debt.

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In other words, the finances of Americans — in the aggregate — are in the best shape in at least a decade. And that largely explains why most economists think the economy will continue to expand with consumers leading the way.

Compared with the peak of the credit bubble in 2007, Americans have $18 trillion more in assets, and $244 billion less in liabilities.

Total net worth — assets minus liabilities — rose by $1.6 trillion in the first three months of 2015 to a record $84.9 trillion, including about $21 trillion in real estate, $21 trillion in pension promises (excluding Social Security), $13.6 trillion in corporate equities, $10.3 trillion in bank deposits, $10.2 trillion in business equity, and $7.9 trillion in mutual fund shares.

Household net worth is now more than six times as large as annual disposable income, near a record.

Of course, the lion’s share of that wealth is owned by a comparative few: just over 1% of Americans own half of that $84.9 trillion, most of it in the form of financial assets such as stocks, bonds and cash. Compared with the nadir six years ago, the value of financial assets has increased by $24.3 trillion, or 54%.

Thanks, Federal Reserve!

But the middle class — whose wealth consists mostly of the equity they have in the house they live in — hasn’t been left out entirely. Since 2009, the value of homeowners’ equity has risen by $5.5 trillion, or 90%.

Thanks, Federal Reserve!

Consumers are taking on only about one-third as much debt as they were at the height of the credit bubble.

Since the financial crisis, consumers have been focused on deleveraging — getting out from under their debts. In the aggregate, they’ve been successful, even as they’ve started to borrow again for college, homes and durable goods.

They aren’t bingeing like they were in the late 1990s or in 2005. The total amount of debt added by the household sector is only about a third what it was at the height of the credit bubble in 2005 and 2006. The debt-to-income ratio has fallen from about 130% in 2007 to 102%, the lowest since 2002.

The quarterly report on financial accounts from the Fed (formerly known as the flow of funds report) has lots of valuable information, but it has a big flaw: It tells us what’s happening in the aggregate, but it doesn’t tell us who is borrowing, spending, or saving. Sometimes averages can deceive as much as they reveal.

The statistics that give us information about median income and wealth, or that tell us how much debt or wealth the typical person has, are released with a long lag. It’ll be years before we know how much different groups have benefitted (or not) from the recovery.

One thing we do know: Wages and salaries — which account for most of the income of most Americans — have been rising slowly. Median weekly earnings are up 1.5% in the past year, according to a separate report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which exactly matches the increase in prices over that time.

In other words, the median worker didn’t get a raise this past year.

The share of national income going to workers has been falling lately.

A smaller share of the nation’s total income has been going to wages and salaries, and more to profits and income from assets owned. From the 1970s through the early 2000s, workers received around 65% of national income in compensation, but after the financial crisis their share fell to below 61%.

In the latest quarter, the share going to workers rose to 62%, still far below the long-term average. It may not sound like much, but the difference between 62% and 65% amounts to $460 billion a year that workers aren’t getting, or about $3,000 per worker.

Imagine how great consumers’ finances would be if they were getting paid $3,000 more each year.