The Way We Were

Do you think the Great Recession permanently changed us? That's what the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development wanted to know, so it asked Americans whether they thought the economic changes were permanent or temporary. And the winner is...

Permanent. According to the 60 percent majority of the public, the economic changes wrought by the Great Recession are here to say--a figure larger than the 56 percent who felt that way in 2010. The future is getting uglier, despite the slowly improving economy. Americans feel most pessimistic about young people being able to afford college. The 58 percent majority of the public thinks college affordability will never return to the way it was before the Great Recession. Forty-seven percent think the elderly, from now on, will have to find part-time work to make ends meet in retirement. Forty-three percent think workers will never again feel secure in their jobs.

Only 14 percent of Americans say the availability of good jobs at good pay for those who want to work will soon return to the way it was before. Fifty-two percent think good jobs will return but not for many years, and 34 percent say never again will jobs be the way they were.

Source: Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, Diminished Lives and Futures: A Portrait of America in the Great Recession Era