By many major indicators, the economy under President Joe Biden is doing great.

Real GDP has grown 5 percent since 2019. Unemployment has fallen to a low of 3.7 percent after a peak of around 15 percent in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And inflation, although still higher than pre-pandemic levels, appears to be receding. Real wages are up by 3.5 percent since Biden took office, with low-wage workers seeing the biggest of those gains between July 2022 and July 2023.

Yet many Americans still seem decidedly unhappy with economic conditions today. Several recent polls have found that people in the United States hold negative views of the economy and of how President Biden has been handling it, despite the rosy macroeconomic indicators. For instance, the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index, which has been measuring consumer confidence levels nationwide since 1978, found that consumers’ feelings about the economy and their personal finances — although up from an all-time low last summer — were still quite negative in August 2023. And a July New York Times poll found that only 20 percent of Americans would rate economic conditions today as ​“excellent” or ​“good.” (By contrast, 49 percent rated the economy ​“poor.”)