Wake me up when we're not in a recession — the economy has felt broken for decades

Some top economists are anticipating a recession. And while a certain degree of such economic criticism can be understood as partisan, both on the part of academics and consumers, statements from the Federal Reserve chairman reflect a more cautionary outlook.

However, for regular Americans who are politically independent and make around or below median income, the status of the economy is a much less important question than long-running trends of economic well-being. From the perspective of most Americans, either a recession is coming or has already started, because the running consensus for normal people is that the economy is bad —and maybe more importantly, has been bad for a while.

Nearly all long-run economic polling data or qualitative study on economic well-being conclude that most Americans exist in a nearly permanent state of economic dissatisfaction, though not always in an outright crisis. For most people, the economy is primarily characterized by some mix of low wages, costly bills and a dwindling supply of good jobs and opportunities.

A chorus of survey data consistently reports that Americans view the economy as getting continuously worse, with those findings often extending as far back as the data sets have existed. There is no shortage of alarming statistics to validate those concerns: Wages have been mostly stagnant, the cost of living continues to rise, small businesses are disappearing, medical debt is increasing, the median age of homebuyers continues to rise and higher education now often requires mortgage-level debt. For those without savings, retiring comfortably seems tenuous, with many seniors choosing to work part-time and younger families delaying parenthood due to economic concerns. And this is without any mention of the more recent and specific concerns like the rising gig economy or the effects of technological advancements.

While some statistics paint a more optimistic picture — especially when the data is carefully selected and narrowly framed — it is important to centerpiece that most people evaluate the economy in broad, intuitive terms. For many, questions about the economy are much less about the exact statistics that a field expert will focus on, like the year-over-year marginal changes in log-scaled disposable income, and much more about fundamental questions: Is this the life that I hoped for? Am I better off than my forefathers? Can I comfortably afford a home, a family and the dreams of my children? Is the future getting brighter or darker? The well-being of the economy is evaluated holistically and continuously over the life cycle, not quarterly and technical.

The economic well-being of ordinary people ought to be a central concern of the economics profession. Yet, despite the importance of this issue, there is no universally accepted metric that fully captures its complexity, and in practice many economists are often much more focused on narrow questions that can infer causation, publish well and advance tenure. While many assume economists are primarily focused on addressing these holistic affordability challenges, the reality is that this area often remains underexplored. Many economists continue to rely on topline macroeconomic indicators, despite privately acknowledging that affordability challenges — such as high rent, expensive child care and rising daily costs —remain central personal concerns.

The economy is often assessed at the aggregate level, with statistics like gross domestic product, instead of a distributional focus that characterizes the experience at the low-end or for the broad swath of people in the middle of the income distribution. Though hard to define, economic well-being should at least measure whether individuals of average incomes can afford to live securely, purchase homes, raise families and retire with dignity. 

The recent interest in recessions, and by extension most contemporary economic evaluations, is informed by some degree of partisanship, but most Americans are somewhat independent and their concerns over affordability are longstanding. For normal people, the prospect of a recession is secondary to questions over personal finance. For most families, the state of the economy is not captured in GDP figures or trade deficit data; it is a more sentimental understanding, more related to the trade-off between rising grocery prices and piano lessons for your kid. It is your wife having to take up a second shift to pay for daycare, the inability of your mother to retire and the degree of stress about the order in which a family pays bills to avoid late charges.

Economists and policymakers need to appreciate that most Americans have long concluded that wages are too low, bills are too high and good jobs are too hard to find. Whether there is a recession misses the larger point: The economy is bad.