Man Lays Out The Infuriatingly Relatable Reasons Why Our 'Good Economy' Doesn't Feel All That Good
Wages are up and unemployment is down, but things still feel incredibly hard, and one man online has a list of reasons why.
fizkes / Shutterstock Everywhere you turn nowadays there's good economic news — from the government and media, anyway. Wages are up, unemployment's down, and even inflation is beginning to come to heel.
But if you're like most Americans, things still feel pretty impossible. So what gives? One man thinks he has the answer, and it's infuriatingly relatable.
The man has a list of reasons why our 'good' economy feels so bad, and why our experiences don't match the numbers.
By several measures, the so-called "Biden economy" that President Joe Biden has built since the darkest days of the pandemic really does look pretty rosy. The unemployment rate is among the lowest in American history. Wages have finally increased and are even inching toward keeping up with inflation.
But to hear most people talk about it, none of us are feeling the positive impacts — and polling data shows that's not just anecdotal, with about 60% of Americans saying they feel the economy is struggling according to a CBS poll.
So why the wild disconnect between the data and the sentiment? Well, according to one man, it's all very simple.
The economic data doesn't account for very real realities like longer working hours and the necessity for second jobs and 'side hustles.'
The since-deleted Facebook post was so instantly relatable that screenshots have continued circulating around the internet on platforms like TikTok.
He begins by pointing out America's almost historically low unemployment, but then gives a number of counterpoints that instantly starts putting things into perspective, like the fact that many members of "Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z are working 2-3 jobs" and that "hobbies now have to be turned into 'side hustles'."
You could say that this is just doom-and-gloom complaining, but there's real reasons to believe this guy's take — many people have been taking on second jobs to withstand the runaway inflation we've been suffering the past couple years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, of course, there's the new trend of "overemployment" in which people take on two or more full-time, work-from-home jobs in order to boost their paycheck.
Those glowing employment and unemployment reports we hear don't take this into account, of course, nor do they take into account whether all these jobs are actually paying enough — which economists have warned for ages makes employment numbers an inaccurate measure of an economy.
Meanwhile, prices remain high and Americans' outlook for their financial and economic future still remains grim.
The rate of inflation has slowed since the astonishingly skyrocketing prices of 2022, and that is good news. But in the end, it doesn't really do much to help Americans make ends meet when prices are still substantially higher than they were before the pandemic.
And certain things, namely fuel, energy and housing, haven't had much mercy on our wallets in recent times — or even in recent decades, in the case of housing. And with at least part of our inflation problems being because of so-called "greedflation" — corporations jacking up prices because they can — it's pretty easy to feel like there's unlikely to be an end in sight.
So it's not exactly surprising that many Americans don't feel at all optimistic about their economic future. As the man noted in his list, "couples are avoiding having kids ... [and] home buying because it doesn't make financial sense."
How can anyone feel optimistic when Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, explicitly stated he's considering taking economic measures to raise the unemployment rate to combat inflation?
Well, it's pretty hard to feel like you can heave a sigh of relief every time a new economic report comes out, or one of President Biden's campaign ads touting his economic successes comes on the TV.
Low unemployment, higher wages and ticking-down inflation don't really mean much when you're like one TikTok commenter, who wrote that he's "currently searching for my 3rd job" despite being "almost 40 [with] no kids, no debt... a degree [and] 15+ years in my career."
It's great that things have improved since the darkest, most shocking days of the pandemic — and those who helped fix things deserve to be applauded. But it's really no mystery why our good economy feels so bad.
And with so many business leaders and politicians — not to mention Kim Kardashian, of all people — so frequently claiming that, as the armchair economists put it in his post, "people are broke because they're lazy and don't want to work"? Well, it's also no mystery why so many workers are furious, and beginning to fight back.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.