The World Economy - How Is It Affecting Our Individual Pockets?
In April 2022, Bloomberg News described the world economy as “wobbling.” Since the beginning of the year, the news service said, we’ve experienced “dramatic” oscillations between opposite poles of bull and bear markets. This extreme movement and uncertainty are disorienting, causing everyday consumers to feel equally extreme fears about what’s in store for their families’ financial prospects.
In August 2022, 79 percent of Americans expressed concern about rising consumer prices, dipping slightly from 84 percent in May. And, since March 2021, a higher-than-usual percentage have been worried about their level of personal savings. Among lower-income people, the percentage expressing fears about how they can afford to pay their bills has remained high for more than two years.
When hope went off-course
2022 started with reasonable hopes of a strong recovery for an economy dominated by COVID-related lockdowns and supply chain slowdowns. Successful nationwide vaccine roll-outs were also supposed to give the re-opening economy a boost.
People with more secure jobs and finances began saving and investing more than they did before the pandemic. In March 2021 the personal savings rate was 26.6 percent. It slowed to above 12 percent by mid-2022 but remains above the pre-pandemic averages of below 10 percent.
But then, Russia’s war on Ukraine delivered another blow to the global economy. According to officials at the Federal Reserve, geopolitical risk factors throughout the world have risen since Russia’s invasion began on February 24, 2022. The expectation is that it will continue to stall the economy even as it pushes inflation upwards. Due to international sanctions placed on Russia as well as Russia’s destruction of Ukrainian resources, financial and commodities markets remained extremely volatile in mid-2022, with the Fed expecting “non-negligible macroeconomic effects” for the remainder of the year.
Also troubling are China’s intensified efforts toward achieving zero-tolerance lockdowns whenever a COVID outbreak occurs within its borders. Under this outlier policy, cities like Shanghai have seen rioting and looting in neighborhoods under strict quarantine, as people are unable to leave their homes to get groceries and medicine. While China asserts its harsh strategy has helped to avoid some 1 million deaths—a figure difficult for outsiders to verify—throughout the pandemic, experts point to recent declining growth in the country’s powerhouse economy as the major downside to the policy.
At the height of the pandemic, China claimed its extreme lockdowns allowed its economy to recover faster and better than those of other countries. However, economists continue to downgrade their growth forecasts for China. By early fall 2022, growth predictions stood at 3.5 percent, well under the Chinese government’s 5.5 percent goal. The downward trends are expected to continue into 2023.
For Americans, the fallout from the total of these and other national and international circumstances continues.
The “pain” of trying to curb inflation
Fund managers in mid-2022 were perhaps at their most bearish in recent memory as they looked at weak markets driven down, in part, by the Federal Reserve’s decision to hike interest rates to contain inflation. In late August, Fed chairman Jerome Powell leveled with the country, advising people to anticipate upcoming “pain” in the form of job losses and a sluggish economy. But, said Powell, failure to address inflation would lead to even greater loss and pain over the long term.
Stocks fell steeply in response to the chairman’s announcement of further interest rate hikes, then continued on their rocky path into the fall. Additionally, the number of Americans statistically considered “financially healthy” (with steady incomes and reliable savings) declined for the first time in half a decade, again in response to high inflation.
Many are barely holding on
A summer 2022 survey reported that although 21 percent of Americans said their financial prospects looked better than before the pandemic, an alarming 40 percent said their financial health had worsened. More than one-third reported having to raid savings earmarked for emergencies to pay for necessities. Close to 60 percent said the current state of the national economy had them feeling a lack of confidence in their personal finances. Almost half have started driving less to save money on gas, while 39 percent have shifted their grocery purchases to staple foods and cheaper store brands.
Now that federal stimulus payments to taxpayers have ended for the foreseeable future, all too many of us are wondering if we’ll still be earning middle-class incomes in 2023. And, as with other measures of societal equity, Black households were particularly hard-hit: In the fall of 2022, only about 15 percent achieved the threshold required to be considered financially healthy.