For one thing, it seems to have something to do with education. If you have a bachelor's degree you are probably in the same boat you were back in 2001 (see Figure). If you have less than that, you haven't done well in recent years, but if you have an advanced degree, you are doing well. One sees articles that say getting a degree isn't worth it, but that is baloney. If you have less than a Bachelor's degree, however, it seems like maybe you shouldn't have bothered with higher education.
For another thing, there is a real decline in manufacturing jobs whereas jobs in education and health are rapidly increasing. Next comes professional and business services. Jobs in retail trade have been essentially flat in this century, but leisure and hospitality jobs continue to increase.**
One of the more glaring examples of how strong pessimism has become is Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index. The measure gauges the difference between respondents who say the economy is improving or declining. The most recent results are not good.
Fully 59 percent say the economy is "getting worse" against just 37 percent who say it is "getting better." That gap of 22 percentage points is the worst since August, according to Gallup, which polled 3,542 adults. The index carries a sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.**
(Click on Figure to Enlarge.*
* http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/14/most-americans-think-economy-is-getting-worse.html
** http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/04/12/is-life-better-than-it-was-decades-ago-for-some-voters-probably-not/?mod=djemRTE_h
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