Eighteen months ago, I wrote about an economy trapped in perpetual limbo, like a plane hovering above the runway, promising a soft landing that never quite materialized. Back then, we had genuinely strong economic indicators that simply refused to translate into public confidence. The unemployment rate was low, wages were rising, consumer spending was robust, yet 58% of Americans believed the President’s policies had worsened economic conditions.
Today, that disconnect has morphed into something far more troubling. We no longer have the luxury of strong underlying data struggling to break through negative sentiment. Instead, we face genuinely mixed economic signals wrapped in a public mood that has grown more sour and more polarized. The plane is still hovering, but now the weather has worsened and the passengers are openly questioning the pilot’s competence.
The Economic Reality Check
Let me be blunt about what the numbers actually show. Real GDP managed 3.3% growth in the second quarter after stumbling 0.5% in the first, suggesting an economy that lurches forward in fits and starts rather than cruising smoothly. But look beneath these headline figures and the picture grows darker.
The August jobs report was nothing short of alarming. Just 22,000 new positions when economists expected 75,000. Unemployment jumped to 4.3 percent, its highest level since 2021. Even worse, the Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered the largest downward revision to job numbers in recorded history, slashing 911,000 positions from the previous year’s count. Translation: the job market was far weaker than anyone realized.
Through August, monthly job gains average a measly 74,750. Excluding the pandemic, that represents the slowest pace since we were crawling out of the Great Recession. This is not the economic strength Trump promised.
Meanwhile, inflation refuses to die the quiet death politicians keep predicting. August saw prices rise 2.9 percent annually, up from July’s 2.7 percent. Housing costs jumped 0.4 percent in a single month. Grocery bills spiked 0.6 percent. Food costs remain 25 percent higher than before COVID struck. These aren’t abstract statistics. They represent the daily squeeze American families feel every time they shop or pay rent.
The Sentiment Crisis Deepens
Public perception has deteriorated markedly since my original analysis. The share of Americans calling the economy poor has risen from 28 percent to 39 percent in just two months. Those rating it good dropped from 26 percent to a mere 22 percent.
Trump’s approval ratings tell an even starker story. His overall approval has tumbled to 37-40 percent across major polls, with economic approval even lower at 36-37 percent. This represents a 14-point drop in confidence since his post-election honeymoon in November 2024. More damning still, these numbers sit well below his first-term averages, when he regularly drew majority approval on economic matters even as his overall ratings struggled.
Here’s what should terrify any politician: only 15 percent of Americans report getting ahead financially. More than three times that number say they’re falling behind. When three-quarters of your population feels economically stressed, you have a legitimacy crisis brewing.
The Polarization Problem
But here’s where the story gets truly disturbing. We’ve reached a level of partisan polarization that makes shared economic reality nearly impossible. Trump maintains 93 percent approval among Republicans while drawing just 1 percent support from Democrats. That 92-point gap ties the record for the largest partisan divide in presidential approval polling.
This isn’t just political theater. It represents the fundamental breakdown of a common factual foundation for democratic debate. Republicans and Democrats aren’t just disagreeing about solutions; they’re inhabiting completely different versions of economic reality. When approval ratings split this cleanly along party lines, we’ve stopped measuring presidential performance and started measuring tribal loyalty.
The Policy Culprits
What’s driving this disconnect? Start with Trump’s signature tariff policies, which are functioning exactly as basic economics predicts: as a tax on American consumers. Tariffs are visibly pushing up prices for clothing, household goods, and imported food items. Economic forecasters project these trade barriers will drive core inflation to 3.6 percent by the fourth quarter and drag GDP growth down to a pathetic 0.8 percent.
The housing crisis continues to strangle middle-class dreams. While home price growth has slowed to 1.4 percent annually, forecasters predict it will accelerate back to 3.9 percent by next summer. Since 1967, housing costs have inflated at 4.25 percent per year, far outpacing overall price growth. For millions of Americans, homeownership has become a fantasy.
Perhaps most perniciously, job growth has become dangerously concentrated. Healthcare alone accounts for the lion’s share of new positions, yet represents just 15 percent of total employment. That leaves 85 percent of workers watching opportunities dry up in their sectors. Youth unemployment among college graduates has spiked to 9.3 percent, up from 4.2 percent in April, suggesting artificial intelligence is already displacing entry-level professional jobs.
The Communication Breakdown
Trump faces a messaging challenge different from his predecessor’s. While Biden struggled to get credit for genuinely strong economic indicators, Trump confronts legitimately mixed signals that resist positive spin. More voters now blame Republicans than Democrats for rising inflation, and Trump’s promises of dramatic economic improvement have created expectations his policies cannot meet.
The administration’s response has been to attack the data itself, firing the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner and questioning the agency’s competence. This represents a dangerous erosion of trust in the basic institutions that provide shared facts for democratic governance.
What Comes Next
As Federal Reserve officials deliberate behind closed doors this week in their September meeting, markets have priced in virtual certainty of the first interest rate cut since December 2024. Some traders even speculate about a half-point reduction rather than the typical quarter-point move. The central bank faces an unenviable choice: support a clearly faltering labor market or risk entrenching inflation driven by tariff policies.
Economic forecasting models paint a troubling picture beyond whatever the Fed decides. Unemployment could rise to 4.6 percent in 2026 as tariff costs and elevated interest rates discourage business investment. Consumer confidence remains below the 80 threshold that typically signals recession risk.
The Fed’s dilemma illustrates the broader policy trap we’ve created. Monetary policy alone cannot solve structural problems created by trade wars and housing shortages. Rate cuts might provide temporary relief, but they cannot address the fundamental disconnects that keep this economy hovering rather than landing.
The Hovering Continues
Eighteen months after I first described this hovering economy, the plane still circles the airport. But conditions have deteriorated substantially. The economic indicators present a more genuinely mixed and troubling picture. Public sentiment has grown more negative and more polarized. Record partisan gaps suggest that economic perceptions flow entirely through political identity rather than objective reality.
The disconnect persists because the fundamental drivers remain: housing unaffordability, persistent inflation in necessities, labor market concentration, and now the added complexity of self-imposed trade barriers. Unlike the previous administration’s disconnect between strong data and sour mood, we now face legitimately mixed signals creating rational uncertainty about economic direction.
The passengers remain anxious, the pilot’s credibility has diminished, and the runway conditions have grown more treacherous. The soft landing I hoped for seems increasingly unlikely as structural headwinds intensify and political polarization makes shared economic truth nearly impossible to achieve.
Until we address the underlying causes rather than just the symptoms, Americans will continue to feel that disconnect between what the data says and what their daily lives tell them. The plane keeps hovering because we refuse to fix what’s actually broken.
