By traditional measures, the economy is strong.

Inflation has slowed

significantly. Wages are increasing. Unemployment is near a half-
century low. Job satisfaction is up.
Yet Americans don’t necessarily see it that way. In the recent New
York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six swing states, 8 in 10
said the economy was fair or poor. Just 2% said it was excellent.
Majorities of every group of Americans — across gender, race, age,
education, geography, income and party — had an unfavorable view.
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To make the disconnect even more confusing, people are not acting
the way they do when they believe the economy is bad. They are
spending, vacationing and job-switching the way they do when they
believe it’s good.
“People say, ‘Economists don’t know why we’re unhappy? Just look
at the prices!’” said Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University
of Michigan who worked in the Obama administration. “We’re
looking at the prices, and we’re wondering, why are you buying so
much stuff?”
“People have faced higher prices and that is difficult, but that doesn’t
explain why people have not cut back,” she said of a phenomenon
known as revealed preference. “They have spent as if they see nothing
but good times in front of them. So why are their actions so out of
whack with their words?”
The question has led to a variety of recent attempts to explain the
disconnect, which could be pivotal in the 2024 election. In the poll,
59% of voters said Donald Trump would do a better job on the
economy, compared with 37% of those who said Joe Biden would.
We called back voters who said the economy was “poor” or “only
fair” to find out why they felt that way, when the metrics, and often
their personal finances, tell a different story.
Many said their own finances were good enough — they had jobs,
owned houses, made ends meet. But they felt as if they were “just
getting by,” with “nothing left over.” Many felt angry and anxious
over prices and the pandemic and politics.
Those feelings may be driving attitudes about the economy,
economists speculated, sounding more like their colleagues from
another branch of social science, psychology.
“The pandemic shattered a lot of illusions of control,” Stevenson said.
“I wonder how much that has made us more aware of all the places we
don’t have control, over prices, over the housing market.”
Inflation weighed heavily on voters — nearly all of them mentioned
frustration at the price of something they buy regularly.
“Gas prices are obscene,” said Leslie Linn, 47, a restaurant manager in
Carson City, Nevada. “I’m looking at mayonnaise for $7. It’s like,
how is that even a thing? So yeah, the economy is not great.”
Dillon Nettles, 23, in Claxton, Georgia, had just stopped at Chick-fil-
A when he answered our call. “What used to cost you seven bucks for
a sandwich and a large fry and sweet tea, now it’s $14,” he said.
Consumer prices were up 3.2% in October from the year before, a
decline in the year-over-year inflation rate from more than 8% in mid-
2022. But inflation “casts a long shadow on how people evaluate
things,” said Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University.
Some people may expect prices to return to what they were before —
something that rarely happens (and deflation can often signal
economic catastrophe).
Also, economists said, wages have increased alongside prices. Real
median earnings for full-time workers are slightly higher than at the
end of 2019, and for many low earners, their raises have outpaced
inflation. But it’s common for people to think about prices at face
value, rather than relative to their income, a habit economists call
money illusion.
“Everyone thinks a wage increase is something they deserve, and a
price increase is imposed by the economy on them,” Katz said.
Younger people — who were a key to Biden’s win in 2020 but
showed less support for him in the new poll — had concerns specific
to their phase of life. In the poll, 93% of them rated the economy
unfavorably, more than any other age group.
Certain campaign promises aimed at them, like forgiveness of student
loan debt and subsidies for child care, were struck down by the
Supreme Court or didn’t pass in Congress. There’s a sense that it’s
become harder to achieve the things their parents did, like buying a
home. Houses are less affordable than at the height of the 2006
bubble, and less than half of Americans can afford one.
Jaeden Grimes, 21, in Avondale, Arizona, has been trying to jump-
start his life since he graduated from college, working a temporary gig
while he looks for a better job and his own place to live. “More than
likely, half my income will go toward rent,” he said. “I was really
hoping on that student loan forgiveness.”
Voters who had already achieved certain markers of economic
success, like advancing in their career or owning a home, also
described feeling stuck, with little money left over to splurge or make
a life change. Yet overall, economists said, data shows that more
people are quitting jobs to start better ones, moving to more desirable
places because they can work remotely, and starting new businesses.
“Even though you hear all this stuff — we added 100,000 new jobs —
it literally means nothing to me,” said Stephen Blanck, 39, who
recently moved from Wisconsin to Fayetteville, North Carolina. “It’s
all fake when it comes to how people are actually doing.”
He said he makes almost $80,000, serving in the military and working
as a DoorDash deliverer, yet feels he had more spending money a
decade ago, when he was two pay grades lower.
“I’m not buying fancier cars, I got a really good interest rate on my
house, we have kids but they don’t cost that much,” he said. “But we
really got to budget. There’s just nothing left over to invest in the
future.”
Linn, the Nevada restaurant manager, is up for promotion and owns
her home, with a decent mortgage rate. Yet there’s a job opening of
interest in San Diego, and she’s unhappy that she can’t afford the
higher living costs there, or to buy a new house with the higher
interest rates.
People always have economic constraints like those Linn described,
Stevenson noted. In a slow job market, for example, it’s hard to
change jobs — now it’s easier, but housing is more expensive.
Still, the uncertainty Blanck and Linn share about the future ran thr