Poll: Americans Pessimistic On Economy

With the unemployment rate at 9.4 percent, the highest level since 1983, Americans are expressing increasingly pessimistic views about the national economy, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds.

More than eight in ten Americans now describe the economy in negative terms. Forty-eight percent characterize it as "fairly bad," while another 36 percent call it "very bad."

Just 14 percent say the economy is "fairly good," and a mere one percent describe it as "very good."

Americans from all regions of the country and all income levels agree that the economy is bad.

Only 27 percent of Americans, meanwhile, say the economy is getting better – down five points from last month. Almost as many (25 percent) say the economy is getting worse. Forty-six percent say it is staying the same.

---

Read The Complete Poll (PDF)

---

CBS News and the New York Times will release the full poll, which covers President Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, Guantanamo Bay and other issues, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

---

This poll was conducted among a random sample of 895 adults nationwide, interviewed by telephone June 12-16, 2009. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. The error due to sampling for results based on the entire sample could be plus or minus three percentage points. The error for subgroups is higher.

This poll release conforms to the Standards of Disclosure of the National Council on Public Polls.