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Posted on 01/19/2026 7:43:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The U.S. economy is either chugging along nicely or seriously struggling, depending on who is asked. The mismatch stems from perception and perspective. While many of the macroeconomic data look benign, they don’t capture the pain experienced by a large segment of society, several experts told The Epoch Times.
At 4.4 percent, unemployment has been only slightly elevated and the median wage growth of 4 percent has more than kept up with 2.7 percent inflation, all according to December data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Yet a solid majority of Americans feel gloomy about the economy, polls indicate.
“I think there’s some element of a vibecession, where the vibes are worse than reality,” said Ben Zweig, labor economist and CEO of Revelio Labs.
It’s understandable that people would be upset about living expenses, even if the inflation rate has subsided, because the previous price increases remain baked-in, according to Zweig.
“People have a very unrealistic expectation that prices should fall to their pre-inflation spike levels, and that’s totally off the cards,” Zweig told The Epoch Times.
“I think people have this cumulative disgruntlement about the economy years ago, and that is very hard to overcome.”
At the same time, “there are some really troubling signs out there,” he said.
“People are not moving and there’s just historically low mobility,” Zweig said.
That hits young people, who are just entering the labor market, especially hard.
“Job posting volume is way down, and that is concentrated in younger workers, more entry level positions. So that is a real problem,” he said.
It was also around mid-2024 when wage growth for the lowest-paid workers started to lag, reversing a previous trend. The lowest paid 25 percent of workers enjoyed faster wage growth than the rest of the workforce consistently since mid-2015. But recently, that advantage has disappeared. For the past year and a half, these workers have seen their wages grow substantially slower than the rest, at a 3.5 percent rate in 2025, compared to the 4 percent overall average.
Even the slower wage growth exceeded inflation, but it’s important to understand the reality behind the data. “Wage growth is not the same [as] individuals getting a raise,” said Ernan Haruvy, professor at McGill University and expert on economic and consumer behavior.
“To get a real pay raise, I have to change jobs. That’s how it works,” he told The Epoch Times.
Technological efficiencies, not exclusively related to artificial intelligence, have likely played a role, according to Zweig, again hitting the lowest-paid and entry-level jobs.
Technology “doesn’t automate jobs wholesale,” he noted. “It automates little bits of tasks. And you can think of the tasks that people do as being in some hierarchy, from very small, granular micro tasks to very broad, abstract workflows. And it’s a lot easier to automate small and micro tasks, and it’s a lot harder to automate big, chunky workflows. So it happens to be that the highly skilled people are the ones that have the broadest responsibilities, and the lower tier workers are the ones that are doing the simplest work. So I think we do see more labor displacement of the most simple jobs.” This dynamic is likely to create more income inequality, he estimated.
The economy has also been harsh to older people who find themselves with only a fraction of what they need to save in order to retire, especially with the looming Social Security insolvency, Scott Siff, founder and CEO of Pivoter, a job matching platform for people 55 and over, said.
“Those folks are feeling things like above-average inflation and higher prices for staples like groceries much more acutely,” he told The Epoch Times in a text message.
“That is only compounded by the fact that those same people face huge barriers finding jobs. With the average age of job-seekers on the online job boards only about 28–30 years old, employers have trouble hiring those folks even if they’re willing to.”
Haruvy doesn’t see the tough labor market going away. “We'll just have to get used to the new reality, which is more competition, more skill updating, less certainty,” he said.
The savings rate dropped to 4 percent in September, the lowest since 2008, excluding 2022, which was distorted by pandemic stimulus payments.
Credit card debt exceeded $1.2 trillion in the third quarter of 2025, with more than $150 billion of that amount over 90 days delinquent.
“Right now, people are dipping into their savings,” Haruvy said.
Nearly half of Americans used savings to cover expenses last year, according to Resume Now’s 2026 Cost-of-Living Crunch report.
The same survey, however, also indicated some improvement.
While at the end of 2024, 36 percent of those surveyed said they couldn’t afford or struggled to cover basic expenses, at the end of 2025, only 24 percent said the same.
The debt data, too, show a positive trend, with the overall debt balance growth slowing down and even dropping a bit in November data, while delinquency rates have followed the same trajectory.
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Because personal debt doesn’t just go away after reading an article...?
LOL
They sit in 500 dollar football game bleacher seats and cry and throw tantrums because they “ain’t got no money.”
Actually people don’t even bother looking at GDP or trade deficits or even the CPI.
They look at the BASIC necessities — Food, housing (rent or mortgage or home prices ), and especially now — Home, car and health insurance and notice that they are STILL RISING.
Although College Tuitions are not considered basic necessities, a huge number of Americans still consider higher education necessary and notice that TUITION and BOARD AND LODINGs have only gone UP ( which means their college loans become difficult to pay ).
That way some of us call the upcoming big game the Stupor Bowl.
Because costs just keep climbing with no way to keep up? Real estate property assessment just increased 7%. For no reason. So the property taxes will increase about $420. Then the homeowners insurance will increase, if only for the fact of replacement value benefits. Then electricity, water, and natural gas are all increasing (locally, for us) in the range of 6 to 8% this year. We are very careful with usage already, so not sure how to avoid an actual increase in cost, going forward. Then groceries..... and the minimum wage around here just increased from $13.50/hour to $15. Including for a 14 year old working at fast food. So all retail and restaurant prices are reflecting this increase. The only thing that is not going up is our income. As retirees, with some decent savings, it is challenging to contemplate how we can continue to live in our home, which has been paid off for about 15 years. I am afraid that the GOP leadership is somewhat out of touch with this reality.
.
had a bump in real estate valuation by the county from $278,000 to $408,000. In the Memphis ghetto. RidiculousI
I think a lot of ordinary people base on their everyday expenses such as groceries, but gas has dropped. Groceries? Not so much.
Cat food prices in my area is still going up.
Long term, big picture, the solution is to start taxing welfare benefits after the recipient has been collecting for some period of time, to encourage people to find a way to get off welfare.
*Cost of goods did not decrease, wages had to increase.
The shrink inflation of the Carter years gave us 13 oz cans when 16’s (food products) had been normal; new normal are the 13 oz cans for food products.
As wages increased, the 13 oz cans (food products) became the standard but larger 20&24 oz cans became available but had to be compared at costs per oz; later store shelf labeling included compared costs per oz.
The new shrink inflation units became today’s standard size with larger units available at lesser costs per oz.
Food stables for some products had to stay the same for unit measurement such as; gallon milk, butter @ lbs and meats per pound, sugar and flour in lbs units.
Units for beer and soft drinks stayed the same, save for some soft drink units went from quarts to liters and 12 oz standard to 16 &20 oz units to give the impression of value per volume.
Thankew, I’m here all week. :)
Early in 1983, pundits were downplaying the economic recovery and saying Reagan’s re-election campaign was a dead duck. Reagan said “Stay the course!” The rest is history.
Here we go again…
No problem....Get rid of the cat....meow...
1) What was the cumulative inflation from 20202 to 2025?
AI: "Based on the search results, cumulative inflation in the United States from 2020 to 2025 was approximately 23-25%"
2) What was the cumulative wage increase for American workers between 2020 to 2025?
AI: "Cumulative Growth Since 2020: The search results don't provide a single cumulative percentage for the entire 2020-2025 period. However, they show that:
Nominal wages have generally been growing between 3-5% annually in recent years"
On paper, the economy is thriving but that's not what people are experiencing because inflation has far exceeded wage growth.
As I’ve posted before, in 2024(?) some former Obama economics guru came out with a study of decades of gov’t inflation data that showed that for average voters, the inflation data didn’t match up with what those voters were experiencing. He then went on into slapping down various parts of the methodology used to collect the data and calculate the gov’t figures.
I kinda hate to ever give credit to any lib, but from my own observations (I budget & watch costs very frugally), it seems he was spot on...
FReepers’ support of Trump is welcome, but, they tend to cherry pick. “Eggs are back down to $2.” Well, yeah, that’s a lot better than $5, but not very far back I was regularly seeing them @ Aldi for $.97. (That last was one of the things that drove me out of trying to resell surplus eggs from our little free range flock, after feed had gone up. I probably should have resumed, but freaking everything seems to keep getting more complicated: Fixing cars, taxes (OMG), you name it. Feed is even higher — I just crush & feed the surplus eggs back to the birdies as a high nutrient supplement so I can buy less feed at Rural King...)
A good point is made about having to move to get a healthy pay raise. Moving costs a lot, and not just money in adirect sense, and then you run into the housing costs...
The media told them to.
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