America Has the Bidenflation Blues

Inflation is a serious bummer.

Despite the lowest rate of unemployment in decades, Americans reported a sharp decline in their financial well-being last year. According to an annual survey conducted by the Federal Reserve, the share of adult Americans who say they are worse off financially than they were a year ago climbed to 35 percent, the highest on records going back to 2014.

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Just 73 percent of adults said they were either doing okay or living comfortably, below the 75 percent level hit in the pandemic year of 2020 and lower than 2021's 78 percent. This is the lowest level since 2016.

The share of adults who reported that they could cover a $400 emergency expense with cash fell five points last year to 63 percent. Thirteen percent of adults said they would be unable to pay such an emergency expense by any method, slightly more than said so in 2021.

The data come from the Federal Reserve's Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, or SHED. The Fed surveyed 11,000 U.S. adults in October.

Blacks, Hispanics, and Less Educated Americans Hardest Hit

The past year has been especially hard on the least-educated Americans. Forty percent said they are financially worse off, up from 33 percent in 2021 and 18 percent in 2019. So much for Biden's promise to create prosperity from the "bottom up."

There was a big decline in the reported well-being of blacks and Hispanics. The share saying they are doing okay financial fell to 64 percent, down from 71 percent for Hispanics in 2021 and 68 percent for blacks. The share of whites who say they are doing okay fell from 81 percent in 2021 to 77 percent. Among Asians, the okay share fell from 88 percent to 84 percent.

Forty percent of Americans said their family’s monthly spending increased in 2022 compared with the prior year, while only 33 percent said their monthly income increased. Twenty-three percent of adults said that their spending had increased but their income had not.

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The survey showed that nearly two-thirds of adults stopped using a product or used less because of inflation. Sixty-four percent switched to a cheaper product. Fifty-one percent say they have reduced their savings as a result of higher prices.

Parents have been particularly hard hit. Just 69 percent of parents with children under 18 say they are doing financially okay. That compares with 75 percent of other adults.

The Fed's survey also asked people to rate their local economy “excellent,” “good,” “only fair,” or “poor.” Thirty-eight percent of adults rated their local economy as “good” or “excellent” in 2022, a steep decline from from 48 percent in 2021. Back in 2019, prior to the pandemic, 63 percent of adults rated their local economy as “good” or “excellent."

People are even more down on the national economy. The share rating the national economy as “good” or “excellent” fell to 18 percent in 2022, the lowest share since the survey began asking this question in 2017. This share has fallen by a jaw-dropping 32 percentage points since before the pandemic in 2019, when one-half of adults rated the national economy as “good” or “excellent."

This has opened up a huge gap between people's perception of their own financial well-being and their perception of the national economy. Prepandemic, the share of people who said their own financial condition was good or excellent was 26 percentage points above the share who viewed the national economy as good or excellent. Now the gap is 55 points.

Biden's Economic Leadership Is Deeply Unpopular

Given how dour Americans are about the state of their finances and the national economy, it should come as no surprise that Biden's economic policies are viewed as a failure. Only 33 percent of Americans say they approve of Biden's economic policies, according to a new poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Even among Democrats, only 61 percent say they approve of Biden's economy.

Just 24 percent of Americans say the economy is in good shape, according to the AP. And in a separate poll, Gallup found that 60 percent of Americans say their federal taxes are too high.