CBS Poll analysis: If the economy is recovering, why don't people rate it better?

When asked to rate the national economy, some people base it on how they're doing financially or what they experience themselves. That might seem odd at first, since they're just one person in a multi-trillion-dollar economy. But the personal lens is often the most salient one we have into the bigger abstract forces at work. For most of us, it's bills and budgets that we pore over at the kitchen table — not the latest Fed briefing. 

Inflation's impact really spotlights this phenomenon today. It's been the top reason people give for their negativity about the economy — and prices, which are the chief complaint, and which haven't abated even as the inflation rate slowed because many of the prices that spiked up after the pandemic have stayed much higher than they were before it.  The latest CPI report just released only added to those increases.

Given that, the pandemic makes a good time-point marker to gauge recovery on people's personal finance scale, comparing just how different things are for them now compared to before the pandemic. And when we do, we see what we might call a lagging personal recovery.