Americans Sour on Bidenomics
President Joe Biden’s attempt to convince America that Bidenomics is a blessing is not working —especially among younger Americans.
The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence fell in February following three months of gains. The Rasmussen Reports Economic Index declined sharply enough in March to reverse four months of gains. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index slipped lower after climbing for two months.
The Economist/YouGov survey of registered voters found that 51.3 percent say the economy is getting worse, up from 47.5 at the start of the year. Around 23 percent say the economy is staying about the same, and 23 percent say it is getting better, each down a little from the polling released on January 1.
Many pundits have tried to brush off these negative impressions of the economy as merely a function of partisan politics. No doubt, political allegiance certainly plays a role. People are more likely to describe the economy as improving when their party is running the government. But independents are more likely than the average voter to say that the economy is getting worse, at 53.5 percent; so, party allegiance does not explain everything.
Bidenomics Not Getting the Job Done for Younger Americans
The most recent survey by Economist/YouGov shows a very big upswing in registered voters under 30 taking the view that the economy is getting worse. In the poll released on March 4, 37.8 percent of younger voters said the economy was getting worse, and just 23 percent said it was getting better. That’s a big swing from just a few weeks ago, when the same poll found that 39.4 percent said the economy was getting better and 26.8 percent said it was getting worse.
The movement among young voters is so stark that you want to wonder if it is real. Time will have to tell. But the downward movement in other consumer confidence measures suggests that it may be more than noise.
The Economist/YouGov poll also asks voters whether they are better off financially than a year ago. Some analysts think this is a better question than those asking about the state of the economy because it is less likely to be affected by things such as the tone of media coverage. A respondent may not know what’s going on with the national economy, but they probably understand their own situation pretty well.
This also worsened recently. The March 4 poll shows that 42.9 percent say they are worse off financially than a year ago, up from 40.4 percent at the start of the year. That’s not a huge movement, but it does show that the Biden administration’s cheerleading is not improving morale.
The poll also shows a big jump in unhappiness among younger voters. At the start of the year, 34.2 percent of under 30s said they were better off, and 17.7 percent said they were worse off. In the most recent poll, 34.3 percent said they were worse off, and 23.7 said they were better off.
What’s going on with younger Americans? The employment situation appears to have deteriorated among young workers in February. While the overall unemployment rate increased from 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent, for workers between 20 and 24 years old it increased from 5.9 percent to 7.2 percent. That’s the highest unemployment rate for this cohort since December 2022.
The jump was driven by a big increase in unemployment among young women. For women between 20 and 24, unemployment rose from 4.9 percent to 6.4 percent. For young men, it rose from seven percent to 7.9 percent. While those levels are not high by historical standards, the increase is notable in an otherwise tight labor market.
The fact that the economy took a turn for the worse among younger Americans may spell political trouble for Biden. Democrat candidates for president need to do especially well among young voters to win. Biden’s job approval rate among under 30s has plunged from 59.6 percent at the start of the year to 51.6 percent in the most recent Economist/YouGov poll.
Perhaps the most unexpected political development of this year so far is that Biden’s age problem is about youth.
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