Poll: Majority of voters say their household finances worse off than year ago

Some federal data tracks with what voters describe. Consumer prices rose 3.4% over the 12 months ending in August, while real average hourly earnings fell 0.3% over the same period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An hour of work bought less than it did a year earlier. Weekly paychecks held about even, up 0.3% after inflation, but only because the average workweek grew 0.6%.

The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll was conducted by Noble Predictive Insights from Oct. 5-7, surveying 2,527 registered U.S. voters. The margin of error is plus or minus 1.95 percentage points when all of those surveyed are included in the numbers. Subsets of data by income group have a higher margin of error.

The squeeze is uneven. Among voters earning less than $50,000 a year, 22% said their income decreased, more than three times the 6% among voters earning more than $100,000, with the middle bracket at 11%. At the top of the scale the pattern reverses: 17% of voters earning more than $100,000 said their income outpaced their expenses, against 6% of voters earning less than $50,000.

Other measures find more stability. The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, published in May 2026, found 73% of adults were doing OK financially or living comfortably near the end of 2025, a share that has held steady since 2022. The Fed asked about households’ current situation rather than how it changed over the year. It also found the share doing OK or living comfortably fell among low-income and younger adults, and reported that price increases remained the most common financial concern.

Orphe Divounguy, founder and chief economist of Quantitative Research Group and a former Zillow economist, said the pattern broadly matches the aggregate data and that a national average can conceal what the poll captures.

“Given recent price increases, workers have lost purchasing power,” he told The Center Square.

The economy can grow while households tread water, he said, because spending has outpaced disposable income and households are saving a smaller share of what they earn.

Lower-income households have less room to absorb higher bills, Divounguy said, because they have less saved and are less likely to hold large stock portfolios. He pointed to the Fed survey, which found 19% of adults earning under $25,000 often or always had money left at month-end, compared with 59% of those earning at least $100,000. Those brackets don’t match the poll’s, he said, but they show the difference in financial cushions.

Energy has been the clearest shock. Gasoline prices rose 27.4% over the 12 months ending in August and energy costs overall rose 16.3%, according to BLS. Electricity was up 3.8% over the same period and groceries 2.2%, BLS reported.

Housing is the other recurring cost. Renter cost burdens hit a record in 2024, with 22.7 million households, or 49% of renters, spending more than 30% of income on rent and utilities, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The median renter earning less than $30,000 had $210 left each month after paying rent and utilities, down 60% since 2001 in inflation-adjusted terms.

Asked about the poll’s findings, the White House pointed to the president’s economic record.

“President Trump’s aggressive, pro-growth economic agenda has stopped Biden’s inflation crisis, driven economic growth, and created private-sector jobs and will continue to deliver economic wins over the next two years,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told The Center Square.

Rogers cited the 2025 tax cuts, lower prescription drug costs, $90 Medicare checks and $500 Obamacare refund checks, more than a million private-sector jobs created, nearly 20 trade deals and record 401(k) balances. The Medicare rebate, reaching 20.8 million beneficiaries this month, comes from a fund Congress created in 2008, and the Obamacare refunds draw on a surplus of exchange user fees. Rogers did not address what the administration says to households reporting flat or falling income.

Divounguy said slower inflation will not undo what households have already absorbed.

“Slower inflation would mean those bills rise more slowly,” he said. “It does not reverse earlier price increases. Families need income to outpace their own expenses to regain financial breathing room.”