‘Americans are literally getting squeezed’: A top economist on why your wages are disappearing

Consumer sentiment in the U.S. has officially never been worse. The University of Michigan’s final April reading came in at 49.8, the lowest in the survey’s 74-year-history. Three of the four lowest sentiment readings ever recorded have now happened in the past nine months.

To be fair, the survey isn’t without its critics. Economists have pointed out for years that the gap between what consumers say in surveys and what they actually do has widened. Gen Z economic commentator Kyla Scanlon coined the term “vibecession” when sentiment was grim but spending was buoyant during the Biden administration.

Analysts also note that the survey can be distorted by partisanship. A 2024 Richmond Fed study found that people feel 31% better about the economy than the data would suggest if their party controls the White House.

The trouble is that sentiment surveys may measure not how people feel, but which words people have learned to use to describe how they feel.

Heather Long, a chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union who made her name covering the pandemic recession, believes the sentiment data speaks to something real.

“Americans are literally getting squeezed now,” she told Fortune. “It’s not just a vibe, it’s a financial reality.”

American workers have remained famously resilient in the battle against five years of sticky inflation. This spring could mark a turning point. Average hourly earnings rose 3.6% over the past year, according to Friday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation in April is expected to come in around 4%, intensified by the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran and gas prices that have now crossed $4.55 a gallon nationally. 

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, said this week that real average hourly earnings will likely register flat to negative for April and “definitely negative” in May, once the supply shock from the Middle East war works its way through the economy. In other words, workers are about to take a pay cut for a war most didn’t ask for.

To be sure, retail sales are still rising, and March receipts were up 4% year over year. But the National Retail Federation’s chief economist, Mark Mathews, has said that the spending is “bifurcated” and that higher-income households are accounting for the majority of it.

For lower-income Americans, the squeeze is already here. A research note released this week by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found a “K-shaped pattern at the pump,” with higher-income households buying roughly the same amount of gasoline they bought before the war, while lower-income households cut back sharply, substituting public transit when available.

Other research from Bank of America showed the highest gap between wage growth for higher-income households versus lower- and middle-income households since 2015.  

Long sees the same divide in Navy Federal’s own member data, which captures spending patterns across more than 14 million households, many of them military and working-class families.

“There’s the people who earn—I’d put it at $150,000 or more in New York, I’d put it at $125,000 or more elsewhere—there’s no recession going on in their world,” she said. “They continue to book their summer vacations.”

She noted that Disney recently confirmed that its domestic park bookings and cruise reservations remained strong through the second half of 2026. “That’s the $150,000-and-above crowd,” Long said. 

Meanwhile, the bottom half of the income distribution experiences a very different reality. “The lower tier was already strained, and now it’s really hard,” Long said.

She added she can see the uptick in more people applying for personal loans, or turning to credit cards. “They’re having to use debt because they aren’t making it paycheck to paycheck.” That divide is what economists increasingly call the “K-shaped” recovery, with the top earners rising and the rest falling. As the stock market continues to reach record highs—Friday marked the first time the S&P 500 touched 7,400—the equity-invested rich just keep getting richer.

The same numbers powering that rally show capital pulling further ahead of labor. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz, flagged Friday that the muted wage growth in the April jobs report (which is, by the way, good news for markets, because it dampens any wage-price spiral fears) also amplifies a longer-running concern: labor’s share of GDP, which has been trending down for two decades and recently hit its lowest level in BLS history.

However, Friday’s labor data, at least, dampened fears the squeeze is spiraling into a full recession. The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April and unemployment held steady at 4.3%. Hiring is broader than it has been in months.

But the squeeze Long described happens on a different timeline than payrolls—it shows up first in credit card balances, then in demand destruction for gas, in canceled vacations the lower tier never booked.

Before any of that, it shows up in sentiment. Sentiment could be a false flag, as some economists warn. Or it could be the first crack.

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