Most adults (68 percent) now say economic conditions are getting worse, compared with 29 percent who think they’re improving, according to Gallup. That gap has widened since the beginning of 2025.

From stubbornly high living costs to a softer labor market, economists say these are the forces that will shape the year ahead.

The U.S. economy was buffeted by waves of stormy factors in 2025 including erratic trade policy changes, pesky inflationary pressures and a jobs market that has been mostly in decline for the past 12 months.

The White House has been quite eager to tout that data because U.S. markets appear to be up—a fair bit. Aides often crow about new market highs. And Trump often claims that the United States is “the hottest country anywhere in the world,” and that all foreign leaders admit it.

High tariffs have led to big swings in the U.S. trade deficit this year. The U.S. economy was still expanding at an uneven but somewhat robust pace as summer drew to a close, a trickle of economic reports delayed by the government shutdown have shown.

Over the last few years Washington tried to micromanage the economy—and the results speak for themselves. When regulators second-guess business decisions, slow-walk mergers and erect new barriers to growth, innovation doesn’t just stall; it starts to ...

A Bloomberg Economics study finds the U.S. could gain 1% GDP growth by abandoning green energy if other nations continue renewable pursuits. But if other countries follow the U.S. and pivot away from renewables, America’s economy would contract 1% ...

After years of narrowing wage inequality, the workplace has become a tale of two economies again. This time, unlike in the postpandemic period, trends favor the top 25% of the U.S. workforce, whose wages are rising by 4.6% a year. That compares with annual ...

The U.S. economy chugs into the new year in stronger shape than many forecasters had expected. But Americans remain wary about the high cost of living.

Trump’s most dramatic economic policy shift has been toward trade protectionism. The president increased tariffs in 2025 to the highest in almost a century, even though the administration reversed some of its earlier hikes, notably on China.

Goldman Sachs economists predict U.S. economic growth will accelerate to 2.6% in 2026, driven by tax cuts, reduced tariff drag and Federal Reserve rate cuts.

One of the biggest drivers of a strong U.S. economy, worker productivity, surged in the summer and early fall, raising hopes of the start of a payoff of AI investment. U.S. productivity accelerated to a 4.9% annual clip in the third quarter, the government said Thursday. That’s the fastest pace in two years.