Americans overall have a surprising degree of satisfaction with their economic situation, according to recent findings.
That's in spite of pessimistic views among certain subsets of the country - and in contrast to consumer sentiment polls that remain stubbornly weak, partly because of the lingering effects of 2022's inflation.
Be that as it may, America's GDP growth is the highest in the developed world, inflation is headed back down to optimal levels, and consumer spending keeps on growing.
According to the Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll, 63 percent of Americans rate their current financial situation as being "good," including 19 percent who say it's "very good." Outlooks for the future are also rosy. Two thirds think 2024 will be better than 2023, with 85 percent of the opinion that they could change their personal financial situation for the better this year. That's in line with Wall Street estimates, which expect continued growth in both GDP and real wages for the rest of the year.
Three quarters of Americans are happy with where they're living - including renters, who've seen housing costs surge over the last few years. A substantial majority of renters are happy renting, with almost two thirds of them saying they're not interested in owning a home and having a mortgage. And, in good news for renters, rents have finally started falling recently.
Partly thanks to the massive injection of funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the number of job openings in America is still much higher than at any point before the pandemic, so it's perhaps not surprising that more than half of Americans say that if they lost their job tomorrow they'd be OK and that they could find an equivalent or better job quickly.
The survey shows that Americans who believe their community's economy is strong outnumbers those who think it's weak.