People walk past a homeless man outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Wall Street on January 18, 2023 in New York City.
Angela Weiss | AFP | Good pictures
More than half of Americans think the U.S. is in an economic recession, even though GDP has been rising over the past several years.
A new step Guardian/Harris poll56% of respondents said they believe the U.S. is in a recession, and 58% say President Joe Biden is responsible for what they see as an economic downturn.
A recession is an extended period of economic decline, usually marked by a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive fiscal quarters.
Under those terms, the US is definitely not in a recession.
GDP grew by 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024. That’s a drop from the 3.3% growth in the fourth quarter of 2023, but it’s not a recession. The United States’ GDP growth is higher than that of other developed countries.
“America has the best economy in the world,” Biden said NBC’s “Today” in April.
The Guardian/Harris poll is another example of the gap between economic data and economic sentiment that has dogged the Biden administration in recent months.
Despite some positive signals that the economy is recovering from the pandemic chaos that disrupted supply chains and sent inflation skyrocketing, consumer sentiment has lagged.
The Guardian/Harris poll comes less than six months before Biden faces former President Donald Trump in the November election. The Biden campaign is struggling to sell voters on the president’s economic record and change the mindset of recognizing the economic gains the country has made since the pandemic.
“We know our work is not done,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre told a January briefing, nodding to the gap between how the U.S. economy is performing by top-level numbers and how Americans feel about it.
