Voters were right about the economy
politico.com
politico.com
But U6 unemployment is also near a 20-year low[0], as is the poverty rate[1].
[0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATE [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PPAAUS00000A156NCEN
The official US poverty definition is about $13k for a 1 person household and $26k for a 4 person household. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2020-01-17/pdf/2020-0...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/200463/us-poverty-rate-s...
It's a fairly reasonable argument that U6 is a better measure of unemployment than U3. And I'd accept a similar argument for their U7, or the other U7's out there that add people like the discouraged.
But I suspect that their U7 is likely at a 20 year low, just like U3 and U6 are. Which would invalidate their argument, in my opinion.
U7 seems useful. U7 being 24% feels right-ish. That's on Ludwig.
Implying that 24% is worse than normal when it's likely one of the best values we've had in decades? That's on Politico.
tl;dr It is very highly correlated to U-3. The paper doesn't include 2024 in the data series but the figure the article cites, 23.7%, is very near all-time best. That's pretty deceptive framing IMO.
> The problem isn’t that some Americans didn’t come out ahead after four years of Bidenomics. Some did. It’s that, for the most part, those living in more modest circumstances have endured at least 20 years of setbacks
> The bottom line is that, for 20 years or more, including the months prior to the election, voter perception was more reflective of reality than the incumbent statistics.
In other words, the official statistics have been misleading for a very long time, misleading in the sense of not showing the true hardships of the economy on the voters.
"Year X is better/worse than Year Y" is not really the point.
Then they should have made up a new number that proves that point rather than making up a new number that seems to imply the opposite.
> In other words, the official statistics have been misleading for a very long time, misleading in the sense of not showing the true hardships of the economy on the voters.
There is a relevant official statistic: the poverty statistic.
Their proposed unemployment rate tracks the official rate fairly well; the difference is that their rate is a lot higher than the official rate at almost every point in time over the past 30 years.
The author also notes that the rates can vary significantly by circumstances, such as geographical location, race, and educational attainment. Increasingly, in recent times, the Democrat/Republican voter divide is becoming a college degreed/non-degreed divide.
X + Y is generally higher than just X, yes.
It's the author's argument. I'm just trying to interpret it correctly.
> X + Y is generally higher than just X, yes.
The author's point is that their rate, the higher rate, is a better reflection of how the voters are doing economically and explains why their perception of the economy can be very different than the perception of many leaders in Washington, who are puzzled about why the voters are upset.
Right, but that doesn't explain why voters are suddenly mad now. American consumer sentiment has deviated from "fundamentals" since the pandemic[1].
Unfortunately for them, there's a political duopoly.
If you tie poverty as the bottom quartile (adjusted per person + addl. impact of children), you are likely to have a poverty wage of around $32,000 (a bit higher than SPM and much higher than OPM). That makes the functionally unemployed much higher. Add to the fact that your benefits like SNAP have a steep drop-off.. you earn $5 more per hour and suddenly, you lose all the benefits and you can see this in the making.
What else are you expecting? Raises every couple of years for a job well done?
The fact is every unemplpyment metric you look at is at a historical low. So regardless of what they are or aren't capturing they are all better than they've been in decades. In relative terms the economy has been doing well.
The difference is two thing. In 2020 half the world shut down and it caused inflation. Our inflation was also much better handled than most of the developed world. And number two, there is a very strong echo chamber that wanted to convince they country the economy was bad, and they were successful.
I'll have to find the link, but there was a reputable poll right around the election that asked people in all the swing states how the economy was doing. They all rated it poorly. They then asked how the economy was doing in their state, they all rated it well.
Voters in every swing state saw up front with their own eyes the economy was doing well in their states and said so in the poll, but were sure the economy was doing poorly because of what they heard about all the other states. Mission accomplished for the echo-chamber.
A more plausible explanation is that the Republicans were able to persuade many Americans that the economic problems caused by the pandemic were the fault of the Democrats. Blaming the other side for historical accident is a tried-and-true campaign strategy, and the pandemic provided a perfect opportunity to put it to use for 2024.
Wasn't one of the main points — perhaps the main point — of the article that the data is measured wrong?
> You act like they’re quoting abstract numbers which are meaningless compared to people’s “lived experience” but unemployment is a large part of people’s experience.
Yeah, and the article was in large part about how the unemployment measures in the data don't reflect what people’s lived experience of unemployment is. That's pretty much the definition of “abstract numbers which are meaningless”.
> Furthermore, inflation adjusted wages are up (with the highest gains in the lowest 50% of earners).
Again, that depends very much on how you measure inflation.
> If these statistics aren’t fully capturing people’s experiences, I’m sure every economist in the world would love to know what metrics are better.
That may be the reason the article suggested some new metrics. Honestly, did you even read it at all?
Supporting links as to why Politico would do something like this:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/06/axel-springer-politico-...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/politico...
—Jeff Bezos <https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123...>
Look at which way the numbers went under the previous regime.
In some cases, it's actually worse: I've had to listen to some people complain about price increases, citing artificially low prices deep in the heart of the COVID lockdowns as if they were the benchmark for a great days' past economy they wish we could return to.
https://www.salon.com/2018/02/12/thom-hartmann-how-the-gop-u...
In brief: It worked very badly the first time and the only reason you were conned into thinking differently was massive debt.
https://www.aha.org/news/headline/2025-02-12-house-and-senat...
For everyone else it sucked. The metrics tend to focus on the former and ignore the “outlier data” caused by the latter.
Instead, they believed what someone told them (“I will make prices go down”). And when they get the obvious outcome (price levels remain where they are at, or more inflation with tariffs), they are still going to be mad. Facts and data are no anecdote for bitterness and anger, which has been decades in the making (since Ronald Reagan).
Historically it seems like they will be happier despite no change or worse change as long as their "team" won.
I picked $13-16/hour because that is what the minimum wage from 1980 would be if it were adjusted to today's dollars and wages.
It was $3.10/hour then which becomes around $12.60/hour if it were adjusted to now based on the CPI. If it were adjusted using the same method the Social Security Administration uses to adjust past earnings when trying to figure your average monthly earnings over you career it would by about $16.50/hour today.
I note that there are several states where the minimum wage is in that range including California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona on the west, Florida in the south, most of the Northeast except Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
Looking at a map of minimum wage by states and a map of who won the states in the 2024 election, I think every state where the minimum wage is $7.25/hour went to Trump. In states where it is at least $13/hour it looks like most went Harris except for Florida, Arizona, and Missouri.
Speaking of minimum wage and Social Security, the fact that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with inflation has an interesting consequence. Normally when you retire your SS benefit is a significant cut from your working pay. For someone whose retirement age is 67 and retiring this year their benefit is the sum of:
90% of the first $1000 of the AIME
32% of the their AIME over 1000 but less than $6000
15% of the AIME over $6000
For example if your AIME is $6000 your benefit would be 90% of $1000 + 32% of $5000 = $2500, so half of your average, which is probably around 1/3 or 1/4 or less of what you were making in your later years. Big drop. If you didn't manage to save/invest a fair amount for retirement this can mean a big drop in your standard of living.
If you had been earning minimum wage all those years though your AIME now would be $1982 ($11.89/hour) which is more than you would be currently earning in your $7.25/hour job. Your SS benefit would be 90% of $1000 + 32% of 982 = $1214/month. That's $14570/year, which is $70/year more than you would be making at 2000 hours/year @ $7.25/hour. (And that $14570 is all take home. Your $14570/year working minimum wage would be $13391 after SS and Medicare taxes).
So for someone who has worked minimum wage all their life at least their SS will be enough to continue their current lifestyle when they retire. They aren't screwed if they were not able to save/invest much.
Also the pretext that 'voters' vote around 'the economy' is hard to qualify nor quantify.
What's clear to me is that a lot of voters believed someone who repeats things over and over and promises to 'fix' things with zero evidence to show for. It tells us more about effectiveness of repeating, fear mongering and blaming 'the others' than about economics.
The author's bio links to https://www.gene-ludwig.com/ which has a number of whitepapers.
It's not that difficult to Google for poll results:
Pre-election: "As concerns around the state of the economy and inflation continue, about eight-in-ten registered voters (81%) say the economy will be very important to their vote in the 2024 presidential election." (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/09/09/issues-and-t...)
Post-election: "Among 2024 voters, the state of the national economy and the level of inflation were seen as reasons to support Trump by double digits." (https://navigatorresearch.org/2024-post-election-survey-the-...)
There's plenty of other polling data from the November 2024 election. What is it that people are finding it difficult to quantify or qualify?
The only people who think the economy is great are the top 0.01% who get richer and richer every year, regardless of "good" or "bad" times.
Supposedly, the townies and students are diehard Democratic liberals. But especially around campus, voting statistics show Trump getting many more votes last November (and Harris many fewer) than the stereotypes would suggest.
Here are the official precinct-by-precinct vote counts, in Ann Arbor:
https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
While you can find a precinct where the Greens got 3.5%, there are 52 precincts, and that number is an obvious outlier. There are far more where the Greens didn't even get 1%.
Interestingly, looking back at the County-wide results, the down-ticket Green candidates did much better than their Presidential candidate. That would suggest Green voters splitting their tickets - to vote against (presumably) Trump.
70% of voters in Washtenaw County voted for Harris: https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
Compare that to 72% of voters who voted for Biden in 2020. I don't see much of a discrepancy: https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
Along with that, the voter turn-out dropped by ~2.2%, in a heavily Democratic County.
Nationally, the Dem's went from Biden's 2020 51.3% of the popular vote, to Harris' 2024 48.3%. Darn close to what you'd get by extrapolating the county numbers.
(I agree with your comments on A2's local issues - but from coverage of the RealPage scandal, NIMBY-ism elsewhere, etc., I suspect we're not too unusual that way. And rather large quantities of high-rise rental housing have been going up around campus and downtown A2 in the past decade.)
-2.2% * 71% = -1.6% (D), vs. -2.2% * 29% = -0.6% (R)
- for a 1% "net gain" for the Republicans. Whether one says that 1.5% + 1% is 3%-ish, or assumes (plausibly) that turnout went up a bit in counties which lean heavily Republican, or something else - the extrapolation is fairly well in line with the delta in the national popular vote.
I think we might just disagree about how impactful, or out of the ordinary, the swing in Washtenaw Co specifically was (or maybe I've just done a poor job of expressing myself or understanding your original comment.) See 2016 for further comparison: https://electionresults.ewashtenaw.org/electionreporting/nov...
If a single stock I own that is in the S&P 500 has a bad year while the S&P 500 index still goes up it doesn't mean the index is wrong or useless. It means you don't understand the calculation method and purpose of the index.
So science has to go underground, reminiscent of the dark ages.
The data was not wrong just because you choose to use a new metric. The data would be "wrong" if it was collected in a way that introduced errors.
This is just the government proclaiming how many boots we've made while everyone walks barefoot.