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A deep and enduring “vibecession” – Partisan differences are increasingly dominating perceptions of the economy.
By almost every metric, the US economy is doing quite well at the moment. There are many ways to evaluate economic vitality. The most obvious is the headline unemployment rate, which was used throughout the Great Recession to monitor the (slow) recovery. Today, though, unemployment is hovering near record lows at <4%.
Beyond this, there are somewhat nerdier, more technical measurements that still capture important aspects of the economy. Things like inflation, GDP growth, and the stock market. All of these indicators are somewhere between “good” and “great”. Inflation has come way down and is now around 3.7%. Core inflation, a better measurement of long-term inflation that excludes volatile commodities like gas prices, is even lower at around 2.5%, essentially hitting the Fed’s 2% target. GDP growth is surprisingly high for Q3 at 4.9%. The stock market is also doing fairly well, with the S&P500 being less than 10% off its all-time high at the end of 2021 and being well-above the pre-COVID high in Jan 2020.
Drilling even deeper, at this point you start to get the indicators people and the media can “fish” for in order to find bad news. Things like median wage growth, wealth inequality, and prime-age labor participation rate. The thinking with these metrics is that even if the more commonly cited stats are doing well, they might not paint a full picture. For instance, if the economy is growing but the rich are eating all the gains, then things like wage growth and inequality can show how most people aren’t benefitting. Likewise, if the unemployment rate has fallen because people have become discouraged and just don’t bother looking for work any more, then labor participation can show what’s really going on. The steelman of these metrics is that they can be helpful in painting a fuller picture, although in practice I’ve often only seen them used when people are willing to use motivated reasoning to paint the economy as underperforming (e.g. politicians, doomers, or the media just trying to create a story). That said, even by these metrics the US economy is doing well. Median wage growth is very high and is well-above inflation. Regular Americans are getting richer, and wealth inequality has fallen.. The prime age employment rate is also near record highs.
In spite of all of this though, many peoples’ opinions of the economy remain in the dumps. The consumer sentiment index has recovered only slightly from its record low a few months ago, but is still barely better than during the worst parts of the Great Recession. What gives? Well, there’s quite a bit of evidence that it’s just partisan emotional expression, i.e. “vibes”. There’s plenty of data showing that Americans tend to rate the national economy as being much worse than their own personal financial circumstances. Kevin Drum has some evidence that this national-personal split is mostly being driven by Republicans. 71% of Democrats and 57% of Republicans say the economy is doing well in terms of their personal situation. But in terms of the nation as whole, 58% of Democrats and just 5% (!!!) of Republicans say the economy is doing well on a national scale. So you have this goofy scenario where Republicans across the country say things are going well for them individually, but as a collective things must simply disastrous. Where is this “disaster” occurring? “Well, not here, but it’s surely happening somewhere”. The 5% mark is particularly interesting because it perfectly matches Republican’s approval rating of Biden. In other words, it seems like asking people how well the economy is doing is just a proxy for “what do you think of the current sitting president”. I’d doubt the numbers would correlate this perfectly all the time, but there’d still be a significant relationship. Whichever party doesn’t control the White House will see the economy in much more pessimistic terms.
Currently this is just applied to Republicans being pessimistic, but it’s almost certainly symmetrical. When Republicans eventually take back control of the presidency, it’s not hard to predict that Democrats will suddenly think the sky is falling in economic terms.
I'm just going to stop you right there and say that I'm reasonably certain that the metrics are being gamed if not completely fabricated.
Actual inflation in terms of what a 100 bucks buys you today versus would have bought you in October of '22 is easily in the double digits and I have the receipts. That thread is from a year ago (almost to the day) and looking back on it I'm feeling pretty well vindicated.
It's relevant to note that even how inflation in the US calculates inflation is subject to regular change- and thus regular selection bias opportunities- as what is being compared changes over time.
Also relevant is how the selection of categories can be used to include- or exclude- relevant data to make certain category measurements more or less impressive for administration political purposes. Unemployment is a classic one, as the unemployment rate that gets fielded by political actors isn't actually the rate of unemployed adults in the population.
What's the alternative to changing the basket of goods as consumer's change their behaviour. Or should we still have a Marconi Wireless and pipe tobacco in the basket?
The unemployment thing doesn't matter as long as you compare like with like. The various unemployment numbers tend to track each other very closely.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1aPBr
Why do you think the answer to your question matters to the point the question is meant to rebut?
The lack of superior alternatives doesn't mean that current items are good. The answer can simply be 'they're both compromised.' There is no obligation- or even reason to expect- valid and bias-free data. It can all be unreliable.
(The alternative, by the way, is to execute but-for tracking so that people can see what the difference metrics would be but-for the substitutions. This means maintaining all models in parallel, with clearly delineated divergence points from old models and new models, such that models can be clearly monitored for divergence to catch points where substitution effects account for obvious differences in ratings. If you want to demonstrate that products are not simply being selected for more favorable comparisons, you must be able to compare it to what they diverged from.)
The point of the unemployment thing is that like isn't being compared to like.
Hence why the motte-claim is 'social unemployment is low!', and the bailey-caveat is 'if we ignore a lot of society.' Society, and society-bar-much-of-society, are not like things, even when they are purposely portrayed as such.
And this goes without various period changes to categorization counting that comes and go with administrations, at which point categorical definition differences are conflated with smuggled insinuations of continuity, which is a not-uncommon way for political actors to imply systemic changes when the primary change in a system is the measurment.
It is across time. If u-2 unemployment decreases, even if you think u-4 or u-6 should be the more relevant number, that still reflects an improvement in the economy.
Any specific evidence for this happening?
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