Now, at 30, Pinkham owns a home in the Seattle area and is planning to build an expensive addition. When he and his wife think about having kids, he said child care costs aren’t a major concern, and if he were to lose his job, he’d have enough savings to get by for years.
But he still has a negative view of the economy, based on what he’s hearing from friends and family.
“There are a lot of people whose incomes don’t go up when the stock market goes up,” said Pinkham, who votes for Democrats. “For me personally, I’m doing fine. But then you look at the macro numbers, and I don’t think it’s in a good place.”
The Trump administration’s regulatory cuts, along with tax breaks for corporations in last year’s tax law, sent stocks to record highs last year. Those heavily invested in technology companies are gaining the most — just seven tech companies, including Amazon and Meta, were responsible for 40% of the gains last year in the S&P 500.
While most Americans have some investment in the stock market, a disproportionate share of gains have gone to the wealthy, with the richest 10% of households owning around 90% of all stocks, according to Federal Reserve data.
Those same households were responsible for around half of all consumer spending in 2025, the highest rate since at least 1989, according to Moody’s Analytics. Wealthy households also buoyed the housing market and new car sales over the past year. Walmart said last month that most of its growth was coming from households making more than $100,000.
Jeremy Kregar, 23, considers himself lucky among his group of college friends. He’s making $21 an hour working for an optometrist in Portland, Oregon, where he has relatively affordable rent of $1,000 a month.
But his paycheck barely covers his bills, including payments on his $20,000 student loan. Some days, he said he’s skipped meals because he can’t afford groceries and earns too much to qualify for food stamps. The idea of owning a home, saving for retirement or building an emergency savings fund seems hopeless, he said.
“Based on my lived reality, and that of my friends, it doesn’t seem like anyone’s doing better. It seems like everyone’s actually doing worse,” Kregar said. “It feels like we’re being gaslit by the government.”
Among the ways Trump has affected Americans’ bottom line is through his tariffs, which have driven up retail prices, said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, who worked in the George W. Bush administration. Higher prices disproportionately affect those with less disposable income to absorb price hikes.
The tariffs “are hurting the bottom end much more than the upper end,” Holtz-Eakin said. “And they have been responsible for a lot of headwinds to the labor market.”
The slowing job market is putting significant pressure on households. Wages aren’t rising as quickly as in recent years, and employers have pulled back on hiring. The U.S. added just 584,000 jobs in 2025, the worst year for hiring since Covid. And most of the growth was driven by a handful of industries, like health care and education.
Economists have blamed this on factors including higher costs and uncertainty from tariffs, overhiring by companies after the pandemic, and the increasing use of robotics and AI.
“We’ve seen essentially no job growth. If you look outside of health and education, we lost jobs in 2025,” Holtz-Eakin said. “It’s not a strong labor market. People are not getting hired.”
Measuring Trump’s moves
The economy was once Trump’s strongest selling point: He centered his 2016 campaign on a fight for working-class voters. Once he was in office, wage growth accelerated for the lowest-paid workers and unemployment fell to the lowest level in decades, prior to the disruptions caused by the pandemic.
But in his second term, Trump’s approval rating on the economy has been slipping.
A White House official said the administration aims to follow a similar playbook to Trump’s first term: using tax cuts and regulatory changes to spur investment, along with a crackdown on immigration, which the administration believes will tighten the labor market and drive up wages.
“Much work remains, but this is just the beginning,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in an email, adding, “Americans can rest assured that the best is yet to come.”
Trump has proposed some programs designed to help lower households’ costs, such as a cap on credit card interest payments and a 50-year mortgage that would reduce monthly payments. Many of the proposals haven’t been enacted.
Other moves, like price cuts on a limited number of prescription drugs, will benefit some people — but could be offset by higher health insurance costs after Congress failed to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Some programs will take years to have an effect, like Trump-branded savings accounts for young children. The federal government will deposit $1,000 into the accounts, which will be invested in the stock market and converted to retirement accounts when children turn 18. Assuming the stock market continues growing at about 10% a year, that $1,000 would become about $5,500 in 18 years. The amount could grow substantially more if families are able to make the maximum contribution of $5,000 a year, which benefits wealthier households.
Trump’s most direct impact on Americans’ finances may come as they file their taxes; many households will see a bigger refund thanks to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” signed into law last summer. Middle-income households may benefit from a reduction in taxes on overtime pay, and some older adults will get a tax break on their Social Security income.
But the biggest gains in new tax cuts will go to wealthier households, including those who own businesses or expensive homes in states with high property taxes and those who receive multimillion-dollar inheritances. The law also extends tax cuts made during Trump’s first term that were set to expire.
“There are things in the bill like no tax on tips, but they are much, much smaller” compared with interventions that help the wealthy, like the estate tax, said Owen Zidar, an economics professor at Princeton University.
He pointed to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center that found households making $460,000 to $1.1 million would get an average tax cut of $21,000 in 2026. Meanwhile, middle-income households making $67,000 to $119,000 would get an average tax cut of about $1,800.
Those breaks come on top of decades of tax cuts, like those for business owners enacted during Trump’s first term, that have benefited the richest households and enabled them to continue amassing more wealth, Zidar said.
Meanwhile, those like Liz Doyle in Oklahoma have continued to struggle to afford the basics.
Doyle, 67, who voted for Trump, said rising prices for everything from coffee to insulin are straining her monthly budget, nearly all of which comes from Social Security.
“The grocery prices are absolutely freaking ridiculous,” Doyle said. “Coffee prices, what in the world?”
Her property taxes have quadrupled over the past two years, she said. She doesn’t have a 401(k) and only owns a small amount of stocks, so she hasn’t benefited much from the market’s surge. Occasionally, she sells some vegetables, like okra, from her garden at the local farmers market for extra income.
“President Trump has done so much better than Biden,” said Doyle, who cited the lower rate of inflation under Trump. “But the question is: Is Trump that good, or was Biden that bad?”
Kregar, who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, said his experience in the economy since graduating from college that year has shifted his views further toward Democrats.
“Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m filled with dread,” Kregar said. “Meanwhile, we’re going to build a White House ballroom? It feels like, as an American, a slap in the face.”
