While much of the focus of President Obama has been on health care reform over the past few weeks, the issue of the economy is still on his plate. Currently, three in five Americans (60%) would rate the job the president is doing on the economy as negative while two in five (40%) would rate his job as positive. This is virtually unchanged from last month when 39% rated President Obama’s economic job performance as positive and 61% rated it as negative.

Confidence in the White House

Confidence in the White House and the Administration to produce policies to help fix the economic crisis has dropped in the past month. In August, over half of Americans (53%) had confidence while 47% did not have confidence. One month later, over half of Americans (52%) now are not confident that the Obama Administration can produce policies to help fix the economic crisis while 48% are confident they will.

Financial conditions ahead

Overall, two in five Americans (40%) expect the economy to improve in the coming year while just over one-third (36%) say they expect it to stay the same and one-quarter (24%) believe it will get worse. In August, almost half (46%) of Americans believed the economy would improve in the coming year.

When it comes to household’s financial situation, about half of Americans (48%) believe it will remain the same in the next six months while one-quarter (23%) say it will get better and three in ten (29%) believe it will get worse. This is almost unchanged from last month when 48% said it would remain the same, 24% said it would get better and 28% of Americans believed their household’s financial situation would get worse.

The job market

When it comes to the job market, attitudes are mostly negative. Two-thirds of Americans (68%) say the current job market in their region of the country is bad while just one in ten (10%) say it is good and 22% believe it is neither good nor bad. Last month, 71% of Americans said the job market in their region was bad and 8% said it was good. Those in the West and Midwest are most negative about the job markets in their region (77% and 70% saying it is bad respectively) while 15% of Southerners say it is good.

So what?

While health care may be the topic of the day, week, and month for the White House, the president and his team need to be careful to not forget about the economy, especially the job market. While people are hearing about how things are getting better, that is not translating into jobs. It’s also not translating into confidence – Americans are continuing to give President Obama negative ratings on his handling of the economy and are not confident his team will produce policies to fix things. This negativity may bleed into other issues the White House is promoting, hurting their chances for success.