So many issues these days. How well is it doing depends on who you ask and whether they have a D or an R next to their name. So, what is the current state of the US economy? Well, the data presents a complicated picture that seems to be more about where people think the economy is going rather than where it is, because if you just look at where it is, it’s doing quite well. GDP growth? Look, it started gangbusters when Biden first came into office.
Economic Recovery Analysis
This is the post-COVID surge that certainly quickly expanded us economic growth, and we had the inflation dip there. Now we’re sitting at just over one percent growth, and it’s really being slowed down, our economic growth, by the Federal Reserve to tame inflation. Let’s take a look at the unemployment rate. This has been on steady decline since Biden took office; it’s down to 3.4 percent. We still have a labor shortage in this country; part of that has to do with our lack of compromise on immigration.
By the way, this is being felt across the board on unemployment. African-American unemployment is also at an all-time low at 4.7 percent. Net gap between overall unemployment and black unemployment are among the lowest of all time. Now inflation, this is what has dogged this economy, and this is what has led many people to believe this isn’t a great time in this economy.
Inflation Concerns
Obviously, we had an inflation rate that peaked in the summer of last year, 9.1 percent. It is still at 4.9 percent, much higher than when Biden took office, but it has been on a steady decline, and some people think it’ll be down to close to that two percent mark, perhaps by the end of this calendar year. So why do people feel bad about the economy? It has to do with overall confidence about where they think the economy is going.
So consumer confidence down a bit from March to April, but even but here’s why consumer confidence went up from March to April, sort of in the moment people said, Yeah, the economy is good right now, in fact, better this month than it was last month. But then you ask them, What’s it going to look like in six months? And they still believe we are headed to a recession. Now people have believed this now for over a year, and a recession hasn’t come. So pessimism in many ways is what’s making people think this is a bad US economy.