Inflation concerns among Americans rise in March
Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman reports on the top economic concerns among Americans.
Video transcript
JULIE HYMAN: Now thing number two this morning is very related to what we were just talking about with what's been happening with prices. It has to do with Americans' perception of inflation. According to the latest Gallup poll, nearly 1/5 of Americans put inflation as the most important problem facing the United States, and 17% of them citing this in March. That's up 7 basis points from February, by the way. 11% cite the economy in general, 4% cite fuel and oil prices.
Now, just to contrast it here, the biggest concern for Americans is outside of the economy. It has to do with government and poor leadership, 22% citing that. But the change in the perception about inflation, Sozz, has been incredible. If you look at the longer term chart here, you can see it's the highest since 1985 at that 17%. It is still dwarfed by how people viewed inflation in the early '80s when it spiked to as high as 52% of Americans citing inflation as the top problem in the United States. But still, really interesting stuff here.
And if you're trying to look for a divide here in, well, are people perceiving inflation more as a problem in low income households? No, it's actually, according to Gallup, a partisan divide here. So in other words, Republicans more worried about inflation than Democrats right now, Sozz. So a lot of interesting, juicy tidbits in this polling data.
BRIAN SOZZI: Giving us reason to be hopeful, Julie, because, clearly, I guess, everything could still get worse on the inflation front. We'll talk more about this later, but McCormick here, earnings out this morning noting that they're having to raise prices. We'll talk a little more about that later. But Wall Street is still very much concerned about the inflation outlook, too.
And I caught up with the OG bond king Bill Gross for the latest episode of Yahoo Finance Presents. That will hit around noon today on our site. He's telling you this. I don't think 7% inflation or more, which we have now, is really our future. A lot of things will reverse like housing prices, oil prices, and used car prices. I think we're looking at 4% to 5% inflation over the next several years. So that is stagflation, but it's not a stagflation-- it's not like stagflation of the early 1980s.
But still, Julie, it could be a stagflationary environment. The missing component right now is joblessness. We're going to get a probably pretty strong jobs report this week, so you're not seeing people canned because inflation is up.
JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, you know, it definitely different from the '80s in many, many ways. Not exactly a cheery picture, but not necessarily a super grim one either.
