A new poll by ABC News and Ipsos indicates that 75 percent of Americans have a negative assessment of the economy, as the nation struggles with ongoing supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, and an uncertain future for the stock market.
The poll, which asked respondents to “describe the state of the nation’s economy these days,” was generally greeted with less-than-enthusiastic responses. Among those who responded, 28 percent said “poor” and 47 percent said “not so good,” while 23 percent said “good” and only 1 percent said “excellent.”
The difference is stark when generally negative responses are aggregated and compared to generally positive responses: 75 percent of Americans gave a negative assessment of the state of the economy, dwarfing the 24 percent who gave a positive assessment.
However, cracks have begun to show in the foundations of the pandemic economy, especially as the Federal Reserve signals its intention to pursue a more aggressive policy of rate hikes to curtail inflation. The expectation of higher rates has resulted in stock market tribulations, with the Nasdaq falling by over 11 percent year-to-date.
These difficulties have not been lost on the American public, who are forced every day to contend with the realities of the pandemic economy. As rising wages fail to keep pace with record inflation, the damage has become impossible to ignore for ordinary people.
These economic woes have also taken their toll on President Joe Biden’s approval rating, if additional results from the same Ipsos/ABC News poll are to be believed. When asked about the president’s handling of the economy, only 42 percent of respondents gave a positive assessment, down 18 percent from the president’s brief honeymoon period in March of last year.
The poll was conducted on Jan. 28–29, 2022 based on a nationally representative probability sample of 510 adults aged 18 or older. The sampling error is plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
While there were significant partisan differences in how respondents judged the economy, both Republicans and Democrats gave majority negative assessments. In a year facing great uncertainty about Federal Reserve policy, markets, and inflation, dour assessments of the nation’s economy are widespread, and policymakers will have their work cut out for them in trying to reverse these trends or continue to face their own growing unpopularity the lead-up to the midterms.
