Ask someone at a grocery checkout lane how 2025 treated them and you often get a two-word verdict: too expensive. Ask the same person about GDP numbers and you get a blank stare — the distant, abstract stats that rarely change the way a rent bill or a prescription does.
The contrast between official measures and everyday experience is the story of the moment. Macroeconomic indicators showed surprising resilience through a year of shocks, but surveys and local reporting tell a different tale: many Americans are reeling.
Hard data, softer moods
Gross domestic product managed to end the year on firmer footing than many expected, a fact market watchers flagged as proof the U.S. economy can keep going despite turbulence. Still, that headline resilience didn’t translate into widespread relief. Polling this month found affordability was the dominant worry: food, housing and health care are regularly described as difficult to afford, and many households report little or no improvement in their finances over the past year.
Unemployment edged up in parts of the year, inflation never quite returned to the low levels of the early post-pandemic period, and wage gains often lagged price increases — a combination that leaves people feeling worse off even as GDP numbers look OK on paper. In short, output can be growing while pocketbooks shrink.
The politics of pocketbook pain
Public sentiment matters for more than dinner-table talk. Recent surveys show that many Americans see the economy as tied to the sitting president. Fewer than one in five respondents said they personally benefited from the current administration’s policies in 2025, and many still give the overall economy a middling or failing grade. That perception shifts political risk into 2026: leaders who are seen as responsible for rising costs or unfinished fixes will face voters who feel squeezed.
Two threads stand out in the public conversation. One is trade and tariffs, which some blame for higher prices and uneven sectoral effects. The other is health care: drug prices and insurance costs landed high on the list of grievances, and policy moves intended to lower costs have not yet convinced a skeptical public.
Immigration policy also has economic echoes. Debates over deportations and border enforcement are felt not only as questions of legality and security but as labor-market shifts. Some supporters expect displaced jobs to be filled by U.S. citizens or legal residents; opponents fear work will go unfilled and local economies will suffer.
Why tech feels like the one bright spot
Among different sectors, technology earned comparatively more optimism. Partly this is about stock market concentration: a handful of tech firms have driven equity gains and headline GDP contributions. But optimism about tech is mixed with unease. Many Americans worry about automation and AI replacing jobs, even when they also believe the technology will drive economic growth overall.
That tension — hope that AI will power productivity paired with fear for individual jobs — shaped conversations in 2025. New AI tools and models dominated investment and attention; for a sense of how fast this world is changing, look at recent product announcements from major firms and the growing crop of enterprise models that promise to reshape workflows. Coverage of these developments helps explain why people see the tech sector as an exception to an otherwise sluggish economy. Read more about Microsoft’s push into in-house models in MAI-Image-1 coverage and how platforms are adding agentic booking and automation features in Google’s AI Mode rollout. For a window into search and workplace AI integration, see reporting on Gemini’s deeper research features.
The everyday calculus: wages, rents, and medical bills
Numbers on paper and life at home meet at monthly bills. In many parts of the country housing costs remain stubbornly high. Even where rent growth has cooled, mortgage rates and down-payment barriers keep buyers on the sidelines. Health care costs, too, act like an uncooperative variable: a single serious illness can erase months of modest pay gains.
Consumer sentiment surveys, regional reporting and local newsroom polling all capture that mismatch: households feeling worse off despite an economy that technically 'survived' the year. Those feelings matter politically and economically — they affect spending, saving, and how people vote.
What this means for 2026 — and for you
Expect affordability to remain the top voter concern. Candidates and policymakers who promise tangible, near-term relief — targeted help with prescription costs, housing assistance, or measures to lower everyday price pressures — will speak to lived experience in a way GDP growth does not.
For households, the practical moves are familiar but important: reassess budgets with an eye toward fixed, recurring costs; shop annually for insurance and prescription plan options; and if your work is in a field vulnerable to automation, consider short-term reskilling or roles that leverage human skills AI can’t easily replicate.
The economy at the end of 2025 looks like a patchwork: strong cells of growth, especially in tech and pockets of capital-intensive industries, layered over wide swaths where workers feel the strain. That patchwork is what will shape political debate, business investment and everyday life as the country moves into 2026 — when promises will be weighed not just against last year's GDP, but against next month’s rent check.