Americans are feeling worse about the economy for the second month in a row, even as the job market shows few signs of cracking.
Consumer sentiment fell to 48.1 in September, according to the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers, down from 51.7 in August. This is the lowest reading in four months, and is down 15% from January 2026.
The decline stands out because, on paper, American workers are on solid ground. First-time jobless claims fell to 197,000 last week, near the the lowest level since 1969, according to the Labor Department.
People are largely employed; the problem is how far their paychecks stretch.
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A big part of that pressure starts at the pump. The national average for a gallon of regular gas is $4.48, according to AAA, up from $3.16 a year ago. Diesel is averaging $6.51 a gallon, just off a record high set earlier this week and nearly $3 more than a year ago.
Diesel powers the trucks, tractors and equipment that move almost everything Americans buy, so those costs don't stay at the pump for long.
"Our business burns diesel every single day," said Nathan Bowers, a farmer in Colorado. He said high fuel costs make it "hard not to pass that on to the consumer," and for many farmers, the timing couldn't be worse.
"It's the diesel prices on top of a really bad drought year, it's putting a lot of people out of business," Bowers said.
A new index from Georgetown University puts numbers to what many families are feeling.
Seventy percent of Americans struggle to afford at least one basic need, including housing, food, health care or child care, according to the Family Economic Well-Being Index from the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. Nationally, 41 percent of Americans face a health care burden, 33 percent face a housing burden and nearly one-third face a food burden.
The index measures how much of a household's income it takes to cover those four basic needs, both nationally and in all 50 states. The analysis uses data from the 2023 American Community Survey, supplemented with additional data on food and child care costs, so it doesn't yet reflect this year's surge in fuel prices.
"It's the sheer scale of the problem," Lelaine Bigelow, executive director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality told Scripps News. "These are not individual problems. We have a structural problem in this country."
Bigelow said the index was designed, in part, to back up the frustration showing up in surveys like Michigan's.
"This index gives data to the stories that we have been hearing and to the feelings people have been sharing in the consumer sentiment reports," she said.
Unlike inflation, which tracks prices, the index looks at costs alongside income. Bigelow said that's closer to how families actually experience the economy: prices go up, wages hold still and bills pile up at the same time.
"We know people don't experience these things in silos," she said.
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One in six Americans, or 16 percent, faces three or more burdens at once, according to the index. Those overlapping pressures fall hardest on children, renters, and Black and Latino Americans. Eighty-one percent of children live in families facing at least one burden, and 44 percent of children face a food burden.
Bigelow pointed to families with young children as the group under the most strain. Nearly seven in 10 middle-class families with children under 6 face a child care burden, according to the index.
"It's more expensive than college, it's more than rent or your mortgage," Bigelow said of child care. When families can't afford it, she said, the effects snowball: "That means somebody might be stepping away from their job in order to take care of their kids." Lower income can then lead to new burdens with food and housing.
Renters are also feeling more pressure than homeowners. Fifty-two percent of renters face a housing burden, compared with 32% of homeowners with a mortgage. Bigelow said that's especially true for younger Americans who are putting off buying a home because of high borrowing costs.
Those costs just went up again. The average 30-year mortgage rate rose to 7.03%, according to Freddie Mac, the highest since January 2025. That's happening even as builders cut prices: the median price of a new home fell 5.8% from a year ago to $393,700, according to the Commerce Department.
For Bigelow, the numbers call for action beyond monthly economic data. She pointed to child care efforts by state policymakers in New Mexico and New York, the need for more affordable housing for families, and the expiration of enhanced health insurance premium tax credits last year, which she said "really hurt a lot of middle-class families."
"Not very many people escape these issues," Bigelow said. "Solutions need to match the scale of the problem."
