Half of Americans say their financial position has worsened in the last year — the most since the Great Recession, Gallup poll finds

• 50% of Americans surveyed in a new Gallup poll said their financial situations are worsening.
• Just 35% of respondents said their financial standing has improved.

As inflation remains high in the US, half of Americans say they're worse off financially than they were last year, according to a new Gallup poll.

The result marks only the second time in the poll's nearly 50-year history that most Americans said their finances had deteriorated, with the first being the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009. The poll additionally found that just 35% of Americans said their financial situation has improved.

The "better off" percentage is not unusually low for dire financial times, Gallup's Jeffrey M. Jones wrote in a blog about the poll. Other times the percentage has hovered around 35% include the late 1970s and early 1980s, the early 1990s, and during the Great Recession.

Low-income Americans were the most likely to say their situation has deteriorated, according to Gallup, with 61% of respondents responding negatively. Upper-class Americans were more likely to say their situations remained the same or improved, per the poll.

From a political lens, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to report they were worse off financially, at 61% and 37%, respectively.

Still, some Americans appear hopeful for the year ahead.

When asked to forecast their financial futures, 60% of respondents said they expect their situations to improve next year, and just 28% said they expect to fall financially. But that 60% figure is lower than recent years, according to Gallup. In 2020, 74% of respondents said they expected their financial situations would improve.

Just over 1,100 people were surveyed by Gallup in January and the poll had a 4% margin of error, according to the report.