Whose Job Is It? Partisan Divides (And Some Agreement) on the Role of Government in the US Economy
By Katja B. Kleinberg
January 22, 2025
The new Trump administration has inherited a robust US economy—and a significant government role in it. The expansion of industrial policy under the previous Biden-Harris administration, through a wide range of legislation including the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021), the CHIPS and Science Act (2022), and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022), had among its goals the creation of new, well-paying jobs in the US and safeguarding of the national economy’s global competitiveness. Like similar initiatives reaching back to the New Deal of the 1930s, these policies have prompted renewed debates over the proper roles of government and private enterprise in the US economy.
In May 2024, we asked a representative sample of 3,300 US respondents who they thought should have the primary responsibility for creating good jobs in the US and for maintaining the US economy’s position in the world.
The results suggest that Americans on the whole envision a division of responsibilities. When it comes to creating good jobs, nearly 60% of respondents assigned primary responsibility to private enterprise. While this represents a majority of respondents, it is noteworthy that 40% felt that the government should have primary responsibility instead.
Figure 1. Beliefs about Responsibility for Job Creation
Democrats and Republicans differed markedly in their responses. Nearly three quarters of Republicans (73%) saw private business as primarily responsible rather than the government, while Democrats were more evenly divided (52% govt and 48% private)
With regard to the position of the US economy in the world, however, more than 75% of all respondents, including 88% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans in the sample, see responsibility with the US government. Only 25% of all respondents thought this responsibility lies with private enterprise.
Common arguments against government involvement in the national economy include concerns about inefficiency and ineffectiveness in achieving policy goals. In follow-up questions, we asked Americans how much they believe different types of public and private investment—in domestic manufacturing, worker training, and research and development of new technologies—can contribute to the goals of job creation and international competitiveness.
Figure 2. Beliefs about Investment and the Global Economy
Figure 3. Beliefs about Investment and Job Creation
Majorities of respondents felt that both public and private investment could help ‘a lot’ to achieve both policy goals. At the same time, in each instance a somewhat greater proportion of respondents had greater faith in the efficacy of investment by private US enterprises than those of the government. In fact, the approach the Biden-Harris administration to industrial policy largely reflects these preferences of the US public, as much of the government investment is aimed at attracting matching private investments.
One caveat about the findings regarding partisan divisions among survey respondents is that when we fielded this survey, a Democratic president was in office. Although some of the Biden administration’s initiatives were touted as bipartisan, partisan divisions in the public’s views on government investment, in particular, may simply reflect attitudes toward the party of the government in power, specifically the president.
The coming months and years afford researchers a unique opportunity of disentangling these explanations. On January 20, Republican Donald J. Trump was sworn in as President. The Republican party now has control—albeit narrowly—of both houses of Congress.
Unless the Trump administration follows through on promises to roll back Biden-Harris public investments. It will be interesting to see whether Republicans’ views of the merits of public investment change significantly with a Republican president, even while conditions on the ground remain largely unchanged. Assessments of how the economy is doing certainly did.
Katja B. Kleinberg is an associate professor of political science at Binghamton University, SUNY. She is co-principal investigator of the Foreign Policy in a Diverse Society project, housed in Temple University’s Public Policy Lab.
This research was undertaken as part of the Foreign Policy in a Diverse Society project (DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/QJR49), which is supported by funding from Carnegie Corporation of New York.