Over the past few months, President Joe Biden has told Americans that the U.S. economy is strong, inflation is subsiding, and the job market is growing. The narrative being pushed is that everything is just fine.
Many people, however, especially younger and poorer Americans, aren’t feeling the same sense of optimism.
A recent Pew poll showed that a significant majority of poorer Americans view the economy negatively. While some differences are cut along party lines, the poor and middle class clearly feel less optimistic.
In reality, the stress and strain of finances for many has seemed to grow over the past five years. Biden’s “strong” economy doesn’t seem to be having a positive effect on our day-to-day lives.
Those in poverty or living around the poverty line feel the stress even more acutely. Their opportunity to get out of their situation feels out of their hands. This is a common theme we at the Georgia Center for Opportunity hear in our work within vulnerable communities. The struggle to work yourself out of poverty without falling back in is an everyday experience that has worsened of late.
Yet the strong message coming from those making policy is that the data tell us this isn’t the case. Are we wrong? Are we just imagining the effects of inflation, or is our experience valid?
As much as we rely on and trust data, numbers cannot paint a full and complete picture. While representative of general activity, data only capture a snapshot of a few situations. That seems to be the case with how we are experiencing the U.S. economy.
Inflation, for example, is slowing, but it has still grown at a rate where most groceries are 50% higher than just five years ago. As we slow the growth of inflation, groceries aren’t going to suddenly return to pre-2019 numbers. Instead, Americans are being forced to come to terms with a new norm.
Some salaries are increasing, but not at a rate fast enough to overcome price inflation. As we attempt to increase salaries faster, we see the price of basic goods increase as well. In California, fast food prices increased by as much as 50% as worker salaries hit $20 an hour.
Jobs are being added monthly, but more people, since the start of the pandemic, are working multiple jobs just to make ends meet. Unemployment numbers also don’t tell us the full story because we don’t regularly track under-employment or those who have given up on work.
Assets, such as property or investments, are skyrocketing in value. Poorer and younger individuals are being priced out of these assets, and even those who do own them are not able to use them since replacing an asset, such as moving into a new home, may not be reasonable.
The stress that most people are feeling about the economy is accurate. Our buying power is significantly weaker than it was just five years ago. Upward mobility — in particular for the most vulnerable — is weakened as each additional dollar earned holds less buying power than it did before. So the fight for a livable wage is undermined as we redefine what a livable wage means.
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For those with fewer economic resources and assets, the current narrative that the U.S. economy is just fine doesn’t hold water. The health of the economy is meant to be a reflection of our economic freedom — freedom to better ourselves, invest in our families, and seize opportunity.
The Biden administration’s false narrative must change. The poor and middle class deserve real leadership on this issue, not an appeasing message that everything is OK. The more we ignore the reality of the American experience, the more we fail to address the root causes of our economic problems.
Corey Burres is Vice President of Communications at the Georgia Center for Opportunity.
