Americans are more anxious about the economy now than they were right after the Great Recession ended despite stock market gains, falling unemployment and growth moving closer to full health.
Seventy-one percent of Americans say they think the recession exerted a permanent drag on the economy, according to a survey being released Thursday by Rutgers University. By contrast, in November 2009, five months after the recession officially ended, the Rutgers researchers found that only 49 percent thought the downturn would have lasting damage.
And that was when the unemployment rate was 9.9 percent, compared with the current 6.2 percent.
“They’re more negative than they were five years ago,” said Rutgers public policy professor Carl Van Horn.
Researchers at Rutgers’ John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development surveyed online a national cross-section of 1,153 adults between July 24 and August 3. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Here’s few more numbers:
42%
Percentage of those surveyed who say they have less pay and savings than before the recession began in late 2007. Just 7 percent say they’re significantly better off.
14%
Percentage who say gains in the stock market have affected them a lot — a sign of either meager investments or the extent to which families unloaded their stock holdings near the bottom of the market.
244,000
Average number of jobs added per month since February, a vigorous pace that recalls the dot-com era of the 1990s. Over the past 12 months, the unemployment rate has dropped more than a full percentage point from 7.3 percent to a nearly normal 6.2 percent.
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