The economic data isn’t fake. But it is measuring the wrong things.

Voter anxiety is driven by everyday affordability, not macroeconomic charts

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

By Chris Lu

Presidents have long tried to persuade Americans that the economy is stronger than it feels. Joe Biden tried and failed. Now, Donald Trump is doing the same – pointing to unemployment, GDP, and inflation data as evidence of an economic turnaround. But as the recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City demonstrated, voter anxiety is driven by everyday affordability, not macroeconomic charts.

The problem isn’t bad political messaging; it’s the government statistics that presidents rely on to judge economic health. This isn’t about data being “fake,” as Trump wrongly asserts whenever numbers contradict his narrative.

In fact, the data is absolutely accurate; it’s just measuring the wrong things.

That’s the argument of Gene Ludwig’s new book, The Mismeasurement of America. Ludwig, who served as Comptroller of the Currency under President Bill Clinton, contends that our most familiar economic indicators were designed for a very different economy. As a result, they no longer capture the lived reality of households in a high-cost world where too many workers are forced to string together part-time jobs with no benefits.

Employment statistics are a prime example. Under the traditional definition, someone working just an hour a week is counted as “employed” as long as they want a full-time job. The data also treats workers as being “employed” regardless of whether they’re earning $1 million a year or a wage below the federal poverty limit. By Ludwig’s calculation, for every American who is unemployed according to the official measure, there are five more who are “functionally” unemployed.

Wage data is equally misleading. Weekly earnings figures don’t count part-time workers and unemployed people who are seeking jobs. During downturns, like the one caused by COVID-19 pandemic, aggregated wage data can perversely look better because layoffs disproportionately hit low-wage workers, artificially raising the average. According to Ludwig, a more accurate reading of wages would show the median American worker earning $9,700 less per year than official statistics indicate.

Ludwig is also pointed in his criticism of inflation measures. The Consumer Price Index tracks 80,000 goods and services, rather than the smaller set of essentials that dominate the budgets of working-class households. As a result, official inflation can fall, even as costs for rent, groceries, utilities, and healthcare go up. Ludwig calculates that the actual rise in prices for lower- and middle-income Americans since 2001 is 35% higher than the official measures indicate.

This helps explain why the kitchen table economy looks so different from the dashboards used in Washington. A Fox News poll in November found that 76% of voters have a negative view of the economy, with large majorities reporting higher costs for groceries (85%), utilities (78%), and healthcare (67%) compared to last year – all at a time when unemployment and inflation appear to be low.

This year’s elections reflected that disconnect. Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey won by talking directly about affordability – not by touting macro indicators but by focusing on everyday costs. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani’s proposals for rent freezes, free buses, and universal childcare resonated with voters who otherwise wouldn’t consider backing a self-described Democratic Socialist.

For Trump, the risk is clear: If he continues to insist the economy is strong simply because headline numbers look good, he will repeat Biden’s mistake of governing through aggregates, rather than lived experience. And if Trump ignores looming affordability pressures, including expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies, he hands Democrats a ready-made argument heading into the 2026 midterms.

Gene Ludwig’s broader criticism, however, is nonpartisan. When government statistics fail to reflect modern life, policymakers from both parties end up designing solutions for a country that no longer exists. This disconnect will become even more acute with AI poised to reshape the entire concept of work. Until the federal government modernizes how it measures work, income, inflation, and household costs, leaders will continue governing in the dark, touting numbers that bear little resemblance to the lives of the people they represent.

Chris Lu is the James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. Among his many government roles, he served as deputy secretary of labor during the Obama Administration.