Economic Conditions

The 1995-1996 government shutdowns didn’t help the GOP’s image, but the party had lost support among the public well before they happened.

Raising the federal debt limit has given both Republicans and Democrats, in Congress and the White House, fits for decades.

42 months after U.S. payrolls bottomed out, the economy still hasn't recovered all 8.7 million jobs wiped out in the Great Recession -- the longest and slowest recovery in the postwar era.

For the first time on record, nearly one out of every two dollars in aggregate U.S. household income went to the college educated.

Nearly seven-in-ten Americans say large banks and financial institutions have benefited the most from post-recession government policies.

Americans perceptions of the economy differ significantly by partisanship, regardless of what the actual economic data show.

Survey Report As Ben Bernanke prepares to step down as chairman of the Federal Reserve in January, the public views him somewhat more favorably (38%) than unfavorably (31%), with 32% unable to offer a rating. Bernanke is better known now than he was in March 2008, when 55% could not rate him; at that time, […]

In 2011, about 3 million U.S. children were living with and being primarily cared for by a grandparent.

The share of Republicans who say government regulation of financial institutions has gone too far is 38 percentage points higher than Democrats.

A short history of the financial crisis that exploded five years ago, in one chart.