The United States has experienced 53 straight months of economic growth, added 10 million private-sector jobs in the last four years and seen the unemployment rate drop from 8.2 percent in March 2013 to 6.2 percent in July 2014. Yet for all of those positive trends, Americans still have a pessimistic view of the country's economic recovery.
A new survey by Rutgers University found 71 percent of Americans believe the Great Recession left the country with a permanent change, compared to 49 percent at the recession's end in November 2009. Only a third saw a positive change in the U.S. economy over the last year, and another third believe it got worse.
The outlook for the future isn't any better. Nearly half (46 percent) don't expect economic conditions to improve in the next year and 27 percent think it will get worse. Further out, only 16 percent of Americans said the next generation could expect better job, career and employment opportunities.
"The vast majority of Americans see the recession as having wrought fundamental and lasting changes across a wide number of areas of economic and social life," said Rutgers researchers. They cited these changes in the affordability of college, the retirement age, job security and retirees having to return to the workforce.
"The typical American worker lives a precarious and doleful existence - unhappy, poorly paid and fearful about losing his or her job," the researchers found. "Shockingly, it is but a mere one in seven (14 percent) who believe that the average American worker is happy at work."
More than a third (35 percent) of Americans responded to a permanent change in their standard of living since the recession. Compared to their savings before the recession, 42 percent reported having less in savings five years after the recession.
Rutgers surveyed 1,153 U.S. residents ages 18 and older between July 24 and Aug. 3. Forty percent of respondents were currently employed and 34 percent were unemployed and looking for work. The other 26 percent split between long-term unemployed or currently unemployed, but looking for work for at least seven months.
