CNN
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Donald Trump’s decisive election victory was about many things: a global rejection of incumbents, a surge in the Republican electorate and a fight for the future of American democracy. But voters kept saying the No. 1 issue this election was the economy.

That explains a lot about why Trump was re-elected.

According to several key metrics, the US economy is on fire and the envy of the rest of the world. But Americans still viewed it negatively, and a significant number of voters blame President Joe Biden and Trump’s opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for not making enough improvements to Americans’ financial situation over the past four years. Poll after poll suggested that Americans had a largely negative view of the U.S. economy.

That’s because economic sentiment doesn’t always mesh well with data that shows the economy is adding jobs, consumer spending is rising and gross domestic product – the economy’s broadest measure – continues to boom. If you pay a lot of money for a cup of coffee or can’t afford to buy a home, this data is meaningless: you feel excluded from the American dream.

Housing: Real estate prices in America have reached new record highs for 15 consecutive months. That’s great news if you own a home — and not so great if you don’t own a home, especially given that mortgage rates are stubbornly high, hovering just under 7%. That’s why only 2.5% of homes changed hands this year, the lowest in 30 years, according to Redfin.

Rent doesn’t provide much relief: About half of American renters spent more than 30% of their income on rent in 2023. Households that spend more than 30% of their income on rent, mortgage payments, or other housing costs are considered “expenses.” -charged” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The housing affordability crisis has helped worsen America’s wealth gap and put people in a financial bind who are forced to move or don’t own a home. But many people who are barely poor also have difficulty making ends meet, primarily because of high housing costs: a fifth of U.S. households that earn more than $150,000 a year live there, according to Bank of America Paycheck to Paycheck America Survey.

Prices: Inflation has returned to normal. But that doesn’t mean prices are falling – they’re just not rising at the alarming levels they were a few years ago.

Prices are now about 20% higher than when Biden took office, giving Americans a daily reminder of how much inflation stinks every time they visit the store. Gasoline prices have fallen dramatically in recent years, from an average record high of over $5 in 2022 to now below $3 a gallon in many states. That helped, but did not solve, the inflation problems that many Americans continue to face on a daily basis.

Policy: How you think about the economy depends in large part on your politics. And the number of registered Republicans in America is growing.

A recent Brookings Institution study released last week found a link between economic sentiment and political affiliation with the party that controls the White House. When Trump took office, Republican economic sentiment rose while Democratic sentiment plummeted. The opposite happened when Biden took office.

But Republicans are three times more likely to think the economy is good when a Republican is in office than Democrats are when a Democrat is in the White House — and the opposite is also true.

Still, Trump will inherit a strong economy – at least on paper.

Jobs: The biggest indicator of economic security is whether or not you have a job, and a historically high percentage of people have a job. Although the unemployment rate has increased to 4.1% over the last year, it remains at a very healthy level and is gradually increasing from the lowest unemployment rate since the first moon landing.

The U.S. economy’s job creation machinery has slowed this year – particularly in recent months. Last month the economy added just 12,000 jobs. Still, the economy continues to add an average of 170,000 jobs per month this year, almost exactly the same number the economy created in the first three years of the Trump administration before Covid hit (175,000 jobs per month).

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies remain so busy looking for workers that the number of job openings exceeds the number of American job seekers.

GDP: The US economy is booming in the broadest sense. Gross domestic product grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.8% in the latest quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Wednesday. That’s a healthy pace by any measure and in line with the economic recovery during the Trump administration, when people felt much better about the state of the economy.

It has also made the American economy the envy of the world: Projected U.S. economic growth this year will continue to be the strongest of any G7 economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Paychecks: Worker salaries are no longer booming like they were a few years ago when inflation really got out of hand. However, they are still growing at an adjusted rate of 3.9%, according to the Labor Department. That’s still faster than inflation, meaning the amount of money Americans have to spend is growing.

Per capita inflation-adjusted disposable income rose for the 27th straight month, the longest increase on record, according to the BEA.