The president’s approval rating with those under 30 has plummeted as he has failed to deliver on promise after promiseRepublicans rejoiced when far more young voters than expected backed Donald Trump in 2024, with many of them moved by Trump’s grandiose promises, such as his vow to “build the greatest
Steven Greenhouse
Republicans rejoiced when far more young voters than expected backed Donald Trump in 2024, with many of them moved by Trump’s grandiose promises, such as his vow to “build the greatest economy in the history of the world”. But Republicans should be alarmed that so many 18- to 29-year-olds have soured on Trump – his approval rating with that group has sunk from 48% in January 2025 to between just 25% and 33% in recent months, according to polls by YouGov/the Economist.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that millions of young Americans have turned against Trump, considering that he has failed to deliver on so many promises, most notably his vow to reduce prices on day one. For young people, inflation is the No 1 economic issue, far outpacing other issues, and they very much wanted Trump to focus on affordability, but Trump has focused on everything but affordability. He’s focused instead on his glitzy, $400m ballroom, his war against Iran (which has increased gas prices), and his tariff wars (which have increased overall inflation). In bad news for Republicans, 78% of Americans under age 30 disapprove of how Trump is handling inflation.
Fed up with the status quo under Joe Biden, many young people expected great things from Trump, but 15 months into his second term, many feel let down, not least because the economy has taken a bad turn. Inflation has increased, job growth has slowed, and housing, healthcare and higher education have all gotten more expensive. What’s more, young Americans complain that the job market stinks for their age group.
“Things are pretty chaotic lately,” Lizabel, a young voter who backed Trump, said in a focus group for the Bulwark. “A lot of people are struggling to find jobs. A lot of people are feeling kind of pessimistic about what things are going on.”
Beyond pocketbook issues, many young Americans are upset by Trump’s authoritarian actions and never-ending chaos: his deeply unpopular war against Iran, his sending masked ICE agents into major cities, his posting a picture of himself as a Jesus-like figure, his demolishing the East Wing of the White House, and his insulting everyone from Pope Leo to supreme court justices to other countries’ leaders.
Just 13% of Americans 18 to 29 say the US is headed in the right direction, while 57% say things are on the wrong track, according to a Harvard Youth Poll released in December. In a sign of profound pessimism, just 30% believe they will be better off financially than their parents. Many young people are no doubt upset that the inflation rate now, 3.3%, is higher than when Biden left office, even though candidate Trump promised he would end inflation and reduce prices on day one. Coffee prices are up 18.7% over the past year, beef jumped 12.1%, and fresh vegetables, 7.5%. Hospital costs have climbed 6.4% and electricity by 4.6%, while gas prices have soared by over 45% since Trump began bombing Iran.
In an effort to woo young voters, Trump said he’d work to make college more affordable, but since he returned to office, tuition has continued to climb, especially at private colleges. At the same time, Trump is pushing for deep cuts in student aid, a move that will hurt non-affluent students in particular.
Trump also said he would lower health costs, but those costs also continue to head skyward. Making things worse, Trump’s “big beautiful bill”, along with his blocking new Obamacare subsidies, will cause 10 million Americans to lose health insurance and cause premiums to more than double on average for 20 million Americans, many of them under 30.
Even though Trump promised to create “millions and millions of jobs”, especially blue-collar ones, many young Americans are worried to panicking about their job prospects. I’ve heard too many stories of young people who have sent out 200 job applications and heard back from only two or three employers – and sometimes from none. Since Trump returned to office, the US has added a puny 26,000 jobs per month on average, one-fourth the rate during Biden’s last year in office. Not only has Trump utterly failed to create millions of jobs, but in bad news for blue-collar Americans, the US has lost 82,000 factory jobs since his inauguration.
The New York Times wrote recently: “This is the worst spring for young degree holders [to find jobs] since the depths of the pandemic.” And it’s not as if Trump is doing anything to improve the job market for young Americans. He has sabotaged the economy by causing gas prices to soar, by imposing his unpopular tariffs, and by creating nonstop chaos and uncertainty. As any business school student knows, corporations that hope to expand and hire want predictability, not perpetual chaos.
Many young Americans fear that AI will wipe out millions of jobs and make life tough for people entering the job market. That’s no doubt one reason many young people think the nation is on the wrong track. But Trump has been indifferent to those concerns. He hasn’t lifted a finger to protect workers who might lose jobs to AI; rather he has done everything he can to help AI companies grow and build data centers.
“It kind of boils down to this … ‘Is the president making life better for young people in this country or not?’” Rachel Janfaza, who researches youth voting trends, told the Hill. “A lot of young people feel like he’s not.” Among young people, Trump’s net approval rating has plunged from +5 when he was inaugurated to way underwater, to between -27 and -47 in recent weeks, according to YouGov.
Trump has broken many other promises, including that he wouldn’t plunge the country into needless wars, that he’d cut energy and electricity prices in half, and that he’d increase the number of apprenticeships to more than 1m. And many young people are no doubt upset that he has gone all out to turbocharge the fossil fuel industry and thereby worsen global warming.
That so many young people have soured on Trump is one of the most promising developments for Democrats. That should help Democrats do far better with young voters in the midterm elections than Kamala Harris did in 2024. Among voters 18 to 29, Harris beat Trump by 19 percentage points, according to Pew Research, but she still badly underperformed with that group. Her margin over Trump with that group was 11 points less than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, and 7 points less than Biden’s in 2020 .
In an era when it’s often difficult to cut all through the bull, it’s significant that so many young voters are seeing through Trump. Many are realizing that Candidate Trump made lots of great-sounding promises to help young people, but has done next to nothing to deliver on them. When young Americans think of Trump, they should think: promises made, promises broken.
Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labor and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues
