The most recent comprehensive study of Pennsylvania’s surging economy was almost startling in its promise. The State of Working Pennsylvania report, released just before Labor Day, found that the state’s economic output was “significantly exceeding” pre-pandemic levels, unemployment rates were near 50-year lows, workers’ bargaining power was high, and working-class families were sharing in the prosperity in a more sustained way than at any point since 1980.

“Historically, if you told me these would be the numbers — employment, growth, stock market, inflation back down, all these things — I’d say, ‘Wow, slam dunk for the incumbent party,’ ” said Christopher Borick, director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. “And that’s the Democrats.”

Instead, by almost every available polling metric, the 2024 presidential race in Pennsylvania is a dead heat. And Vice President Kamala Harris’ chance of securing the state’s critical 19 electoral votes may hinge on whether the reality of the state’s bustling economy squares with the perception of its citizens.

Two weeks before the election, the answer to that is a qualified no.

“It’s clear to me that people in Pennsylvania were feeling better about their finances in October 2020 than they are now,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, which has extensively polled registered voters on issues like the economy.

“The irony of that is that how they felt in 2020 was probably from all the government subsidies they’d received around COVID,” Yost said. “But regardless, when people say things were better under [former president Donald] Trump, the data says they believe it. It’s not even close.”

Economy on the rise

Without question, Pennsylvania’s economy is on the upswing. The State of Working Pennsylvania report, produced by the Keystone Research Center, makes that much clear.

“We think — and our report says — that Pennsylvania has now restored the prosperity from before the pandemic, even despite inflation that was mostly caused by supply chain bottlenecks and corporate price gouging,” said Stephen Herzenberg, Keystone’s executive director.

The report found that wages for workers in almost every category have outpaced inflation over the past five to 10 years, that the state’s economy bounced back from the pandemic much faster than it did from the Great Recession, and that unemployment rates for white, Black and Hispanic workers all hit record lows within the past year.

Herzenberg said the administration of President Joe Biden and Harris “deserves credit for finishing the job” of recovery that began with bipartisan pandemic relief measures in 2020 and extended through passage of the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021. Enacted with Democratic votes that overcame Republican opposition, the rescue plan sparked what the U.S. Treasury called “one of the strongest periods of economic growth in a century,” and that growth extended to Pennsylvania.

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Further, Herzenberg said, a deeper look at the state data revealed that unemployment has dropped dramatically since the pandemic — and it has done so in every one of the state’s 67 counties, including almost pure-red rural Western Pennsylvania.

“We’ve got a situation in the state in which there are more job openings than there are unemployed workers,” Herzenberg said. “In 20-plus years, that hadn’t been the case.”

Union activity is also on the rise. In 2023, union membership in the broad private service sector jumped by 64,000 to a total of 280,000 statewide — a 30% increase in one year. The Economic Policy Institute has found that a unionized worker earns 10% more in wages than a peer in a nonunionized job in the same industry. “Across the board,” Herzenberg said, “workers have more bargaining power when unemployment is low, both individually and collectively.”

Herzenberg noted that the Biden/Harris administration has strongly supported unions and union membership, and most unions — both in Pennsylvania and across the country — have endorsed Harris. “The Democratic platform has very detailed policies [in support of] the ability of workers to organize,” the researcher said. “If you read the Republican platform, you will not find the word ‘union.’ There could not be a bigger difference between the two parties.”

Still, when asked by Franklin and Marshall pollsters about their overall personal financial situations, nearly half of the respondents said they felt they were worse off than they had been a year ago, a figure that has held steady for most of the past several years.

Some sectors lagging

So why the disconnect with voters? Part of the answer may be found in the subsections of the Keystone report.

Although employment levels in most categories have already returned to or well surpassed their numbers from before the pandemic-induced recession, both the construction and manufacturing sectors are still lagging. “Those are blue-collar jobs,” Yost noted, in a state that still identifies strongly with its roots in the iron and steel industries.

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Though Black and Hispanic unemployment levels sit at near 20-year lows, both saw a slight uptick during the last quarter of data included in the report. And blue-collar wages have been largely stagnant for the past two decades, the kind of detail that complicates any broader attempt to describe economic recovery.

“When you ask people what’s the problem they’re seeing in the state, it’s definitely the economy at the top of the list,” Yost said. “Even something that has been hammered home, like immigration, barely shows up when you give them an open-ended question asking what’s going on. It’s unemployment and economic concerns for sure.”

Perhaps because of that, political experts say, the Harris campaign has tread carefully with its advertising messaging, focusing on specific areas — like helping first-time home buyers, as Pennsylvania’s prices are going up faster than the national average, and expanding the child-tax credit — rather than the economic recovery as a whole.

“It’s a little nuanced,” Muhlenberg’s Borick said. “You don’t want to sound like you’re celebrating when some people don’t feel very positively. They walk a tightrope on that. Trump has it much safer — people feel negative about the economy, and you just stoke those feelings.”

‘Trump’s best asset’

In Franklin and Marshall’s September poll, concern about the economy was the most often mentioned problem facing the state, with nearly half of the respondents saying Pennsylvania is “off on the wrong track.” The Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll in September, meanwhile, found that the economy and inflation were by far the most important considerations for likely voters.

Asked by Franklin and Marshall researchers who is most prepared to handle the economy, 50% of respondents answered Trump, with Harris at 39%. (Nationally, Harris has closed that gap in some recent polling.)

These economic concerns “are really Trump’s best asset” in Pennsylvania, Yost said. “I think if he were a disciplined campaigner, that is pretty much all he would be talking about.”

It isn’t clear, though, whether that will decide the election. Pollsters recalled the 2022 midterms, when the economy was also the most frequently cited area of concern and Biden’s approval ratings were dismal. “It should have been a Republican wipeout, and it wasn’t,” Yost said. “That’s the case this time. The contextual variables in this [year’s] race favor the Republicans; why they’re not winning is a good question.”

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The Pennsylvania presidential election may yet be swung by a relatively small number of voters who either say they’re undecided or have a candidate in mind but still aren’t 100% sure. “If you’ve got 1% undecided and 7% who’ve made a choice but think, ‘I might still change,’ then the economic messaging could help there,” Yost said.

The polling around issues breaks dramatically along partisan lines. While 25% of registered Democrats in the Muhlenberg poll cited abortion and reproductive rights as their priority issue, only 3% of registered Republicans did. Some 21% of Republicans listed immigration as a priority; only 2% of Democrats did. And while protection of democracy and democratic norms was the top concern of 11% of Democrats, only 2% of Republicans felt the same way.

Most partisans, though, already know their vote. Less than two weeks before Election Day, it’s largely uncertain how wavering Pennsylvania voters will make their decisions. In that respect, the state’s most recent — and mostly favorable — economic news could matter greatly in the push to get Harris over the top.

“All the little things matter more,” said Borick. “Even a slightly more positive appraisal of the economy could be impactful.”