President Obama just can’t get credit for the improving economy.
With 2014 drawing to a close, Obama’s economic advisers have tried to draw attention to the fact that it’s been the best year for the economy since the 2008 financial crisis and has seen the fastest job growth since the dot-com boom year of 1999.
But the year will end with the president just as unpopular as when it began, and with voters still deeply skeptical of his handling of economic affairs.
“It’s important we focus on how strong the economic growth has been this year,” said National Economic Council director Jeff Zients on a late December media call to advertise the gains.
The president’s advisers have touted the most salient facts ad nauseam: The economy added 2.65 million jobs in 2014 with a month left to go, the most since the 1990s. The unemployment rate has fallen by nearly a percentage point, while labor force participation has been stable. The private sector has set a new record, with 57 straight months of job creation. The U.S. has added more jobs than all other advanced economies combined.
The good news kept rolling in during December. Oil and gasoline prices plummeted, acting as a stimulus for consumers, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average cracked 18,000 for the first time. The gross domestic product grew at a robust 5 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the strongest growth since 2003.
“Indeed, 2014 was a breakthrough year for the United States across a wide range of metrics important to middle-class families,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman said in reaction to the GDP release Tuesdsay.
Even income and wage growth, so far the missing ingredient in the recovery, appear to be materializing. Inflation-adjusted hourly earnings growth has outpaced the anemic 2001-2007 average for the past two years, Furman noted at a Dec. 16 press briefing, and it is expected to accelerate as the unemployment rate falls.
“We still have a long way to go in terms of wages and income. But you’re seeing the strengthening economy translate,” Furman said.
Nevertheless, Americans disapprove of President Obama’s management of the economy by double-digit margins, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls.
“The public is frequently a lagging indicator in terms of economic improvement,” said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. 	
There are early signs that perceptions of the economy are starting to turn around. The University of Michigan/Thomson Reuters consumer sentiment index in December rose to its highest level since January 2007, before the crisis. Consumers have the highest expectations for long-term growth in a decade.
Similarly, a December CNN poll found that respondents had a net favorable view of economic conditions — 51 to 49 percent — since the first time since 2007.
Bowman said that it would take several months of sustained robust good news for improving economic expectations to translate into better approval ratings for Obama. For now, she said, voters’ perceptions of his economic management are probably influenced by his bad ratings in other areas. “Americans are not that confident in President Obama’s stewardship of foreign policy, that probably holds things back,” she said.
Gabe Horwitz, the director of the economic program at the center-left think tank Third Way, suggested that the president’s unpopularity might reflect deeper, longer-running problems affecting the U.S. middle class.
“The middle class is worried that a middle-class job doesn’t get you a middle-class life,” Horwitz said.
In general, polls reflect significant pessimism about the long run. Polls asking Americans about the opportunities for their children’s generation find deep, lingering worries. One conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC in August found that 76 percent of adults, a record high, do not believe that their children’s generation will have a better life than they do. A Pew Research Center report in October that asked a similar question found that optimism was lower in the U.S. and many other advanced countries than in developing countries, and that it had fallen since 2013.
Horwitz’s research indicates that Americans view it as harder to afford four big “tickets” to middle-class prosperity: A college degree, health care coverage, retirement savings and home ownership.
“The question is which party is going to actually frame up their work to affect this middle-class prosperity,” Horwitz said.
Zients said “the area that we all need to continue to focus on is middle-class wages.”
“There’s more we can do and we’re going to be very focused as we enter the new year,” he said. In particular, he said the White House would be looking to work with the Republican Congress on trade deals, corporate tax reform, and using one-time revenue from corporate tax reform for investing in infrastructure.
Federal Reserve officials projected at their meeting ending Dec. 17 that the unemployment rate will fall to 5.2 percent or 5.3 percent next year, near or below the level it views as consistent with a health economy and stable inflation.
If those predictions pan out, it will test the public’s disapproval of Obama.
