Despite an official unemployment rate below five percent, millions of jobs created since the previous recession, and the recent attainment of record stock prices, Americans remain downbeat regarding their economy.
According to a survey of people in sixteen nations recently conducted by the Pew Research center, only forty four percent of Americans rate their economy as good, though as reported by the New York Times, that proportion has risen from eighteen percent in two thousand and eleven.
Politics helps inform these views, with only thirty seven percent of conservatives giving the economy high marks versus forty five percent of moderates and fifty five percent of liberals. In China, economic growth has been decelerating for the past five years, but eight seven percent of Chinese surveyed describe their economy as good. So do eighty percent of Indians and fifty seven percent of Australians.
People in Japan and in many European nations regard their economies as poor, with no one being quite as despairing as the Greeks. The Greek economy has shrunk twenty six percent since two thousand and seven and unemployment there is twenty four percent.
