Americans normally are happiest when the economy is growing rapidly. The unusual nature of today’s recovery has upended that pattern.
Last year was the best year for job growth on record. Workers are commanding solid wage gains. Booming home and stock-market values have lifted household wealth to records.
But the record job growth followed record job losses in 2020, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Inflation at 7.5% is eating up those wage gains for many Americans. And the unsettling effects of the pandemic, such as product shortages, are still playing out.
That explains why consumers say they feel as bad as they did in the financial-crisis year of 2009, a recent Gallup poll showed. For the first time, Americans who say they are “not too happy” outnumber those who say they’re “very happy,” according to a survey from the nonprofit group NORC at the University of Chicago.
Unlike the country’s last big inflation bout in the 1970s and early 1980s, when price pressure built over a decade, this time a cost-of-living runup unfolded in months. It caught many off guard, from President Biden and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to the ordinary grocery shopper.
www.wsj.com/articles/why-this-economic-boom-cant-lift-americas-spirits-11645544670
Home prices rose 18.8% in 2021, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index, the biggest increase in 34 years of data and substantially ahead of 2020’s 10.4% gain.
All regions saw price gains last year, but increases were strongest in the South and the Southeast, each of which were up over 25%.
Phoenix, Tampa and Miami reported the highest annual gains among the 20 cities in the index in December. Phoenix led the way for the 31st consecutive month with prices 32.5% higher than the year before. It was followed by Tampa with a 29.4% increase, and Miami, with a 27.3% increase.
“We continue to see very strong growth at the city level,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “All 20 cities saw price increases in 2021, and prices in all 20 are at their all-time highs.”
www.cnn.com/2022/02/22/homes/us-home-prices-case-shiller-december-2021/index.html