Inflation is at a 30-year high, and a newGallup poll finds pain from rising prices across America.- The poll finds price increases are causing financial hardship for 45% of Americans or their household.
From paying more at the gas pump to a Thanksgiving dinner that was likely more expensive last week, Americans are feeling the pain of rising price increases. For lower-income families, it's especially tough to get by right now.
According to a new Gallup poll, 45% of Americans said they saw financial hardship for their households because of recent price increases.
Although the majority don't report feeling any financial strain because of the price increases, 10% said they or their household are experiencing "severe" hardships from recent increases, meaning it's affecting their standard of living.
Jeffrey Jones, senior editor at
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Americans are seeing price increases for all different kinds of expenses. Gas prices in October were 49.6% higher, used cars and trucks were 26.4% higher, and food prices overall were up 5.3%.
Not everyone is facing financial hardship from rising costs
As seen in the following chart, although a combined 71% of lower-income American households making less than $40,000 say the price increases are causing moderate or severe financial difficulties, 71% in households making at least $100,000 say they aren't feeling any.
In addition to education and household income level breakdown, the new results included a breakdown by political party. According to the poll, 37% of Democrats said they are feeling moderate or severe financial hardship, lower than 49% of independents and 53% of Republicans.
Gallup points out, however, that there isn't much of a difference between political parties for those who say they are facing severe financial hardships because of recent price increases. Eight percent of Democrats and 11% of both Republicans and Independents said this.
"So clearly income is what's driving this, but within that, because of the party of the president — we see this in a lot of measures — if you're the same party as the president, then [you] kind of think things are better than people who support the other president's party," Jones said.
Although inflation has been called transitory by the Federal Reserve and the White House, they're changing their tune. Fed Chair Jerome Powell told Congress on Tuesday it was "probably a good time to retire that word," while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at the Reuters Next conference she's "ready to retire the word ... I can agree that that hasn't been an apt description of what we are dealing with."
Despite the new survey results from Gallup, not as many Americans see inflation really as the main problem compared to other issues the US is experiencing, per a separate Gallup survey. The open-ended question asked in the survey was, "What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today" and found that only 7% of Americans said inflation in November's survey.
A higher share of Americans said "the government/poor leadership" and "coronavirus/diseases" at 21% and 13% respectively.
"It has been more than 20 years (April 2001) since inflation was named as the most important problem by at least 7% of Americans," Gallup wrote. "The last time mentions of inflation were significantly higher than now was in May 1985 when it registered 11%."
If prices continue to rise, the share of households feeling financial hardship may increase. Jones told Insider that "It really depends on what happens with prices."
"Rising prices are expected to persist, meaning more Americans are likely to report hardship and those most vulnerable are likely to see things get worse before they improve," Gallup wrote.