Americans increasingly rate this as the best economy since the late 1990s, with a recent surge in optimism, even though many economic metrics show
striking similarities to the final years of the Obama administration.
Fifty-nine percent of Americans say they are better off financially today than they were a year ago, the highest since 1999, according to a Gallup survey released last week. And nearly three-quarters predict they will do better a year from now, the most optimistic reading that Gallup’s annual “Mood of the Nation” survey has ever recorded.
Other
polls and
surveys aren’t quite as ebullient, but nearly all show that Americans are far less worried about the economy and their personal financial situations than they were during the last presidential election.
In interviews with six small-business owners across the country, all acknowledged that the economy had turned around under President Barack Obama, but they pointed out that three more years of steady growth, solid job gains and additional stock market records under Trump had turned “cautious optimism” into full-blown optimism.
