Americans Sour Further on Biden’s Economy as Pessimism Hits Highest Since 2008: Poll
Americans have soured further on the economy under President Joe Biden, according to the latest ABC News /Ipsos poll, which shows that the share of U.S. respondents who think the economy is getting worse has soared to its highest level since the financial crisis of 2008–09.
More than two-thirds (69 percent) of American adults believe the U.S. economy is deteriorating, according to the poll (pdf), published three months before the midterm elections in November.
That’s the highest share of Americans who say the economy is getting worse since 2008, when 82 percent expressed a similarly pessimistic view.
The survey, carried out on a sample of 665 respondents and with a 4.2 percentage point margin of error, also shows Americans trust Republicans over Democrats to handle key issues like crime, the economy, and inflation.
The poll also provides added contours to the heated debate on whether the United States has—as some economists argue—fallen into a recession or—as members of the Biden administration insist—it has not.
Recession or Something Else?
Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and a number of economists have argued that the U.S. economy isn’t in a recession, despite meeting the informal rule-of-thumb definition for a contraction—namely, two back-to-back quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth.
While the two-quarter rule has for decades served as a shorthand definition of recession, economic contractions in the United States are declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), who use a broader definition than the two-quarter rule-of-thumb.
Yellen told a press conference in late July that “most economists and most Americans” define a recession as a “broad-based weakening” of the U.S. economy that includes businesses shuttering in large numbers and mass layoffs.
“That is not what we’re seeing right now when you look at the economy. Job creation
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