Let's start with what people said.
Most people like my daughter are one of those people that know they are not better off, because their finances are pretty simple. They look at what they are earning and what they are spending.
Under Trump she was saving a lot of money (enough to put a downpayment on a house). Now she feels she is barely able to maintain her 401(k)-contribution due to rising food, energy, health care costs, and housing (for her the big increase has been in HOA assessments on her condo, but in general housing costs have skyrocketed much faster than inflation, whether due to rising rents, higher borrowing costs on a home, or rising HOA fees).
My daughter is an anecdotal example, but her experience is echoed in the most recent Gallup reported in October, 2024.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/652250/majority-americans-feel-worse-off-four-years-ago.aspx
Other media reports have highlighted this issue.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/economy/economic-wellbeing-2023-inflation/index.html
Then there are the Federal Reserve Surveys that note...
"Some groups continued to experience financial stress at higher rates than others. Lower-income
adults were more likely to experience material hardships including not paying all bills, not always
having enough to eat, and skipping medical care because of cost. Additionally, the gap in financial
well-being between parents of children under age 18 and other adults widened, as parents saw a continued decline in well-being in 2023"
Not everyone did poorly. I read a report not long ago, that people that owned stocks and real estate did well under Biden. I fit in that category and it is true, my real estate and stock portfolio are the reason, I am ahead. My income has grown because most of it comes from passive investments and because interest rates are higher (hurting borrowers) investment returns are higher (helping investors).
Borrowing costs is one of the biggest things almost all indexes miss, but people don't. If you are someone like my daughter, who has been nursing her 14-year-old car, because buying a new one would produce a brutal car payment at today's interest rates, you are painfully aware of how much borrowing costs will hurt your cash flow. If she buys a car, she will have to make really tough decisions about where to cut $500 or more out of her monthly budget.
There is some evidence that 2024 will turn out to be a good year for most Americans as the rate of inflation growth has slowed and wage appear to be outpacing inflation this year, but many people are still behind.
Credit card debt is reaching new highs. People borrow for cars and homes when they are optimistic, but they borrow on credit cards to close the gap between what they earn and feel they need. You did mention credit card delinquencies, they appear to be up from when Trump was President. I expect them to soar soon for various reasons including the protracted stalling of employment growth.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DRCCLACBS
While the Department of Labor touts job growth, are you aware that US born citizens have seen no growth in full time jobs outside of government since the pandemic. All the job growth has gone to foreign born citizens, part-time jobs, or government jobs. The reason "birthplace" matters is it tends to be a "proxy" of where job growth is coming (in this case low paying service jobs.
Even the one booming high paying technology sector is engaging in layoffs.
https://www.npr.org/2024/01/28/1227326215/nearly-25-000-tech-workers-laid-off-in-the-first-weeks-of-2024-whats-going-on
All of this is not to suggest that the "world is coming to an end", but simply that when people aggregate the economy into a single measure it might look okay in total, but that prosperity is not being experienced by a large percentage of US citizens.
They made that clear during this year's election and what is particularly insightful were the gains in popular vote in historically strong Democratic states like New York, Illinois, and California. These "converts" are not "progressives" turning into "conservatives" but the data largely argues they are wage workers wanting change.
