It’s in pretty good shape, even if it gets poor ratings. My column in the Washington Post today goes into it:
The economy is growing. Unemployment is low. Wages, for most people, are rising faster than prices. Stocks are rising.
Yet the public keeps giving the economy a thumbs-way-down. Gallup finds that only 21 percent of Americans give it an “excellent” or “good” rating. That’s roughly the same as the percentage that felt positively about the economy in April 2013, during the painfully slow recovery from the Great Recession, when the unemployment rate was 7.5 percent instead of the current 4.4. . . .
In the hours since the column posted, we got an even better unemployment number: It’s at 4.3 percent now, after strong January job growth.
Update: The column now has the new unemployment rate, along with the just released revisions to estimated job growth in 2024 and 2025.