Jobs confidence increases
But Americans still worried about economy
Washington — As the U.S. job market continues to improve, increasing numbers of Americans say they believe jobs have at least partially recovered from the impact of the recession, but the public remains more doubtful about household incomes and the overall security of the economy.
The improvement in jobs will likely be confirmed Friday when the Labor Department releases its monthly employment figures. They are expected to show another healthy increase in new jobs.
Several months of such improvements have had a notable impact on public views of the economy. Nearly seven in 10 Americans now say they believe the job situation has at least partially recovered, according to a new survey from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That’s a big change since Pew last asked that question, in September 2013, when fewer than half of Americans thought the job market had begun recovering.
In the current survey, about seven in 10 Americans said they viewed current economic conditions as “fair” or “good,” and almost eight in 10 said they believed next year will be the same or better, the poll found. The poll found majorities holding positive views about improvement in real estate and the stock market, as well as jobs.
Despite those improvements, many Americans still have significant worries about their economic situation and the nation’s.
About three in 10 Americans said their personal finances had yet to recover from the recession. Another three in 10 said they took a significant hit in the recession and had recovered, while about four in 10 said the recession had not had a major impact on them.
The more positive assessments, not surprisingly, came from those
higher up the income ladder. Among Americans with household incomes of $100,000 or more, only 14% said they had not yet recovered from the recession, while half said the recession had not significantly affected their personal financial situation.
By about 2-to-1, Americans said the economy remained just as vulnerable to a major crisis as it had been before the financial meltdown in 2008.
Obama administration officials have repeatedly tried to make the case that reforms adopted in 2009 and 2010, including the Dodd-Frank law that expanded oversight of the financial system, have made the economy more stable, but this and other polls show widespread public skepticism on that point.
By a similar majority of almost 2-to-1, Americans said the economic system “unfairly favors powerful interests.”
Large majorities said government policies since the recession have helped big banks and financial institutions (71%), large corporations (67%) and wealthy people (66%). But many fewer said they see those policies as having helped the poor (32%), small businesses (28%) or the middle class (26%), which is the group that the vast majority of Americans, nearly nine in 10, see themselves as part of.
The belief that the economy tilts toward the powerful is strongest in the center of the American income distribution. Among those with family incomes between $30,000 and $100,000, nearly 70% took that view, the poll found.