As unemployment continues to hover around the 10% mark nationally, Americans are beginning to lose a little of the optimism that they had a few months ago on where their financial conditions will be going in the next few months. This is something the White House is paying attention to as evidenced by the recent announcement that they will be holding a job summit next month to discuss how to find work for these millions of people who are unemployed. But is this going to be enough as President Obama’s job approval on the economy continues to move in a downward direction?

Just one-third of Americans (34%) rate the overall job President Obama is doing on the economy positively while two-thirds (66%) give it negative ratings. This is down from October when two in five U.S. adults (40%) gave the president’s performance on the economy positive marks and 60% rated it negatively. Also, when it comes to having confidence in the White House and the Administration to produce policies to help fix the economic crisis, 44% of Americans are confident and 56% are not confident. This is unchanged from last month.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll® of 2,303 adults surveyed online between November 2 and 11, 2009 by Harris Interactive®.

Economic Expectations

Thinking about their household’s financial situation, less and one in five U.S. adults (18%) say they think it will be better in the next six months while one-third (35%) believe it will be worse and 47% say it will remain the same. In October, one-quarter (23%) believed their household’s financial situation would be better in six months, 45% said it would remain the same and three in ten (31%) thought it would get worse. The number of Americans who say things are going to be worse is the highest it has been since March of this year, sowing that the economic optimism of the summer may be dwindling.

Job Market

The job market has been a lagging economic indicator and talk of a jobless recovery is persistent. Less than one in ten Americans (8%) rate the current job market in their region of the country as good while 18% say it is neither good nor bad. Three-quarters (73%) however, rate the job market in their region as bad – with almost two in five (37%) of adults saying it is very bad. This is also slightly worse than last month when 10% of Americans said the job market in their region was good and seven in ten (70%) said it was bad.

There is also a regional difference. Those in the East are more pessimistic about the job market with 6% saying it is good and 75% saying it is bad as are Midwesterners with 78% saying the job market is bad in their region. Southerners are more optimistic with 11% saying the job market is good and two-thirds (68%) saying it is bad.