Ten years after the end of the recession, 23% of Americans who were adults at its onset in December 2007 — some 47 million people — are in worse financial shape than they were before it hit, Bankrate.com reported Thursday.
Another one in four of respondents in a survey said they were doing about the same now as they were before the recession started.
“The echoes of the Great Recession remain very present in the financial lives of many Americans, despite the improvement in the broader economy,” Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com, said in a statement.
“While some have managed to prosper in the decade since, there are still tens of millions who are struggling to even get back to where they were before the economy took a turn for the worse.”
YouGov conducted an online survey in mid-May among 2,740 U.S. adults, including 2,315 who were 18 or older when the recession began.
The continuing U.S. economic divide was evident in the survey results. Only 51% of respondents reported that their overall financial situation was better than before the recession.
For several groups, things appear to be worse now than they were back then. Twenty-six percent of those who were negatively affected by the recession said they were faring less well now, compared with 14% who said they were not hurt by the downturn.