A lot of us just aren’t saving money.

A new survey by Bankrate.com finds just 62% of Americans have enough spare cash to pay for a significant unexpected bill such as a $1000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair.

Yahoo Finance Columnist Rick Newman says that’s dangerous for the entire country’s economic health.

“We have been seeing the effects of this in small, incremental ways that are adding up to big changes,” he says. “One of the implications is ongoing stress on the middle class and potentially a shrinking middle class, which I think we’re seeing.”

And Newman says like death by a thousand cuts, these small, incremental economic effects related to the lack of savings will eventually come back to haunt us.

“We’re going to get lower economic growth. We need everybody who can be contributing to the economy contributing and if they don’t, we all lose.”

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Newman isn’t surprised so many of us are strapped for cash.

“This is really the big remaining problem with the U.S. economy,” he points out. “Certain numbers like employment are starting to look good. But one thing that hasn’t come around is wage growth. Wages have been stagnant. Median household income over the last 14, 15 years has actually gone down. That means people are falling behind when it comes to inflation, and they’re not saving money because they just don’t have it.”

So why has wage growth not kept up? Newman says a lot of factors are at play, especially technology.

“The digital economy has a lot to do with this,” he argues. “People who do not get the training or have the skills this modern economy demands are just falling behind in many cases.”

Newman believes having a better-trained workforce is the only way we’ll see an increase in personal savings.

“The solution is that the maximum amount of people have the right skills for the digital economy, and that’s not easy to do,” he says. “That gets down to education starting in grade school and high school, it gets down to companies offering the right kind of training, and it comes down to people looking out for themselves.”

And Newman believes the personal responsibility aspect is extremely important.

“Instead of waiting for the government or companies to fix things for them, people have to be aggressive themselves about getting the kinds of skills and training and be in the right positions where the jobs are,” he adds. “The people who are doing that are getting ahead.”