If you spend your life looking at economic data, these look like the best of times. Inflation is a mere 3%, and unemployment is hovering near 50-year lows. That, however, is not how the bulk of Americans see it.

Why it matters: Americans' views of the economy are colored by their politics as much as the actual state of the economy.

• A crucial question for the 2024 election cycle — not to mention the national state of mind — is whether the quite solid economic backdrop will start to translate into a broader sense of things-on-the-right-track, can-do optimism in the year ahead.

By the numbers: The economy is in a pretty great place if you follow only the statistics. For example, the misery index — a handy, if simplistic, measure of economic distress that's the sum of the jobless rate and inflation — stands at 6.7%.

• That is higher than it was just before the pandemic (5.8% in February 2020) but lower than it was during what's remembered as the boom times of 2000 (average 7.3%).
• Yet most measures of how people feel about the economy remain quite soft, even after a June surge.
• The Gallup Economic Confidence Index, for example, has rebounded from last summer's lows but remains substantially lower than it ever was in the 2010s or during the 2001 recession.
• The University of Michigan said Friday consumer sentiment continued to rebound in early July, hitting the highest since September 2021, but it remains below pre-pandemic highs.

Reality check: Polling about the economy is...

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