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- 50% of Americans surveyed in a new Gallup poll said their financial situations are worsening.
- Just 35% of respondents said their financial standing has improved.
- Lower-income Americans were the most likely to say their finances have deteriorated.
As inflation remains high in the US, half of Americans say they're worse off financially than they were last year, according to a new Gallup poll.
The result marks only the second time in the poll's nearly 50-year history that most Americans said their finances had deteriorated, with the first being the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009. The poll additionally found that just 35% of Americans said their financial situation has improved.
The "better off" percentage is not unusually low for dire financial times, Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in a blog about the poll. Other times the percentage has hovered around 35% include the late 1970s and early 1980s, the early 1990s, and during the Great Recession.
Low-income Americans were the most likely to say their situation has deteriorated, according to Gallup, with 61% of respondents responding negatively. Upper-class Americans were more likely to say their situations remained the same or improved, per the poll.
From a political lens, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to report they were worse off financially, at 61% and 37%, respectively.
Still, some Americans appear hopeful for the year ahead.
When asked to forecast their financial futures, 60% of respondents said they expect their situations to improve next year, and just 28% said they expect to fall financially. But that 60% figure is lower than recent years, according to Gallup. In 2020, 74% of respondents said they expected their financial situations would improve.
Just over 1,100 people were surveyed by Gallup in January and the poll had a 4% margin of error, according to the report.