Middle-income Americans are facing an economic hangover from the inflation of the last several years, and it has led to increased pessimism about their financial prospects, a new analysis finds.
A report by Primerica found that in the third quarter of 2025, just 21% of middle-income Americans believe they'll be better off financially in the next year, while 34% believe they'll be worse off and 33% expect their situation to remain the same.
Those figures are notably more pessimistic than the firm's data from the third quarter of 2020 showed, when 33% of middle-income Americans thought they would be better off financially in the next year versus just 17% who thought they would be worse off and 40% expected they would be about the same.
"The inflation hangover doesn't just tighten day-to-day budgets – it chips away at the financial foundation families work hard to build," Primerica wrote. "For households already balancing tight budgets, even modest increases in essential costs can force tough decisions: tapping savings, adding to credit card debt or delaying retirement investments."