Economy Anxiety Is Compounding

Executive summary

American consumers are running out of patience with rising prices — and the pump is where it shows most. A new Economy Vibe Check survey of 837 respondents finds that 80% report gas prices climbed in the last month, a figure that tracks closely with the University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index hitting an all-time low of 44.8 in May 2025.

The results paint a portrait of compounding financial stress: utilities, groceries, and gasoline are all squeezing budgets simultaneously, and open-ended responses overflow with words like "inflation," "unaffordable," and "survival." These aren't outlier complaints — Northwestern Mutual's 2025 national study independently confirms 65% of U.S. adults name inflation as their top financial worry.

Four takeaways define the story: First, gas prices function as a real-time economic barometer — respondents who felt the pump squeeze were more likely to say the economy feels worse than a week ago. Second, utilities edged out groceries and gas as the most-cited structural concern, a counterintuitive result suggesting energy bills have become the new front line. Third, personality shapes perception: respondents higher in neuroticism reported a measurably darker economic outlook, independent of actual conditions. Fourth, financial anxiety isn't episodic — for a meaningful share of respondents, it's a constant backdrop.

Context

The Economy Vibe Check was fielded to 837 U.S. respondents across seven questions probing how people feel about the economy right now — not in the abstract, but through the concrete lenses of gas prices, utility bills, grocery costs, and the anxiety those pressures create week to week. The study combines structured multiple-choice items with open-ended prompts, capturing both what people choose from a list and what they reach for when given a blank page.

The timing matters. The survey lands in the middle of a sustained consumer confidence collapse. The University of Michigan's preliminary May 2025 results show sentiment down nearly 30% since January, with only 17% of consumers expecting to maintain spending on high-priced items — a far weaker posture than during the 2022 post-pandemic inflation surge. Five-year inflation expectations have climbed to 3.9%, and 57% of consumers spontaneously mentioned high prices as eroding their personal finances in that same wave.

The study's design captures a particular kind of signal: how people feel about economic conditions relative to a week ago, which factors they identify as driving that anxiety, and how personality traits — specifically neuroticism and openness to experience from the OCEAN model — interact with those perceptions. That last element is unusual. Most consumer sentiment surveys treat respondents as interchangeable; this one uses psychographic profiling to ask whether the same objective conditions land differently depending on who is perceiving them. The answer, it turns out, is yes — and the gap is measurable.

The population skews toward the economically engaged: respondents are completing a multi-question survey about their finances and the news cycle, which likely screens in people for whom these topics are salient. That self-selection makes the results directionally consistent with nationally representative benchmarks, not a distortion of them.

Conclusion

The Economy Vibe Check captures a consumer population that is not just worried — it's exhausted. Gas prices hit eight in ten respondents in a single month. Utilities are quietly becoming a larger structural burden than gasoline. And the open-ended responses make clear that people aren't looking for analysis; they're looking for relief.

Three things are worth watching closely. First, the utilities front: rate increase requests are at record levels, and if regulators approve even a fraction of the $31 billion pipeline, the top-ranked concern in this study will get worse before it gets better. Second, the neuroticism signal has practical implications for anyone trying to communicate economic conditions — whether that's a central bank, a financial brand, or a policy office. A meaningful share of pessimism is dispositional, and data-heavy reassurances won't move it. Third, the high-openness respondents who notice gas price changes first are worth tracking as leading indicators: if they start reporting relief at the pump, broader sentiment could follow.

The national benchmarks and this study point in the same direction. Consumer confidence is fragile, the cost pressures are multi-front, and the feedback loop between rising prices and emotional economic perception is running hot.