According to a bleak New Year’s opinion poll, Americans are expecting a year dominated by economic uncertainty, political unrest, increasing rates of unemployment and crime in 2023.
As President Joe Biden begins his third term in office, the country is still reeling from the pandemic and the economic shockwaves caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gallup surveyed 1,800 adults.
Americans anticipate more suffering instead. Most respondents to the survey expected bad things to happen in 12 out of the 13 economic, political, social, and foreign categories.
According to the polling organization, “Americans are approaching 2023 with deep cynicism and scant expectation that the economic troubles that closed out 2022 will abate.”
Few US adults also think the country’s partisan politics will become better.
Eight out of ten people predict that 2023 will be a challenging year economically, with more taxes and a widening budget deficit. More than six out of ten people predict that prices will increase rapidly and the stock market will decline in the upcoming year.
These feelings are in line with the depressing economic trajectory of 2022, which was the worst year for Wall Street since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and during which inflation reached a 40-year high of 9.1 percent in June.
The Federal Reserve may opt to keep aggressively boosting interest rates in an effort to get price increases back to 2 percent despite the fact that the annual inflation rate fell to 7.1 percent in November.
In November, the unemployment rate was 3.7 percent, and the US has mostly avoided experiencing significant job losses. Americans believe that this is changing. Only slightly more than half thought the rate will go up in 2023.
According to a poll issued when the new Congress met in Washington, DC, with Republicans seizing control of the House and ushering in a new period of split government, 90% of Americans anticipated political conflict at home for another year.
Additionally, according to research, 66% of Americans and 72% of Americans believe there will be more strikes by unions this year.
Americans, by a large margin, anticipate another year of international tensions, and most think that China will become more powerful than the US in the coming years.
According to nearly two thirds of respondents, Russia’s influence will decline in the world in 2023. This prediction is likely a result of Moscow’s recent setbacks and territorial losses in its conflict with the nearby Ukraine, according to the study.
Despite the fact that most Americans were pessimistic, there was a partisan divide, with Democrats being more hopeful than Republicans, which is usual for people who support the party of the president in office.
Democrats differed from Republicans in their expectations for 2023, with a majority predicting full or increasing employment levels, moderate price increases, a better stock market, and more US influence throughout the world.
