It's getting grim out there.

Homes around the country are sinking in value, stocks are mired in a bear market and escalating food and energy prices are eating into American incomes as wages fail to keep pace and unemployment rises. People are dining out less, giving up entertainment and scaling back summer vacations amid $4-a-gallon gas, higher airline fares and fewer flights.

No wonder some people have a case of the mopes.

"You just wonder when it's going to end," said Susan Andrewson last week as she watched her 20-month-old son Michael climb on the indoor playground at the South Hills Village mall in Upper St. Clair. "Everything is just so expensive."

The 45-year-old Mrs. Andrewson worries what the economy will be like in 18 years when Michael goes to college.

"I just can't imagine how expensive it will be," she said.

National surveys reinforce this gloomy outlook.

U.S. consumer confidence recently sank to a 16-year low, as measured by The Conference Board, while expectations for the future hit the lowest point since the New York-based private research group began surveying the mood of consumers in 1967.

Only 36 percent of respondents said they would take a vacation in the next six months, the lowest since The Conference Board began asking that question in 1978, and 15.9 percent said they were expecting a decline in their income -- an all-time high for that category of hopelessness.

Pittsburgh's largest bank, PNC Financial Services Group, joined the ranks of the dyspeptic last month with its introduction of the PNC Household Economic Stress Index -- a new metric that accounts for inflation, unemployment and declining real estate values.

What PNC found was that household stress is well above what it was during the last recession, in 2001, and approaching levels last seen during a more extended recession from July 1990 to March 1991.

The current situation "is like a thumbscrew" to the average consumer, said George Loewenstein, a professor who studies the relationship between economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. "It is not at all surprising that people are responding to the squeeze with pain and fear."

Worth noting, however, is gross domestic product is still rising, and the group charged with officially calling a recession (the National Bureau of Economic Research) has not yet done so. Also, consumer spending (which accounts for two-thirds of U.S. economic activity) is holding up relatively well, contradicting the bleak sentiment reflected in surveys.

Still, the current combination of more expensive food and gas combined with falling home values "makes it feel like a deep and hard recession to American households," said PNC senior economist Robert Dye.

The robust spending from consumers is "disguising the desperation," argued Carnegie Mellon's Mr. Loewenstein. Food and gas, he noted, are unavoidable expenses for average families -- thereby influencing anxiety more sharply than other price increases.

"It's hard to cut back on groceries," he said. And "if you don't live near a bus line, it's hard to change to public transportation."

The current downturn is a far cry from the Great Depression or even the double-digit unemployment and double-digit inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s. But Mr. Loewenstein dismisses suggestions that the media could be stoking consumer fears unnecessarily.

In fact, he said, "I think the media isn't drilling down deeply enough to understand the real hardships of the median income American family. I keep reading stories saying, 'Why are people so unhappy?' "

To Mr. Loewenstein, such stories are evidence of an "out of touch" press that does not "understand the pressures on the average American family."

"The pain," he added, "is real."

Consider the people who signed their names to 1,459 Pittsburgh-area home loans in 2006 and who are now likely to go into foreclosure, according to estimates from the Allegheny County chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Or, listen to the concerns of Upper St. Clair's Joan Subak, who is among those experiencing price pressures firsthand.

"Every time I go to the grocery store I am paying more and coming out with fewer bags," said Ms. Subak, 61. Between planning her daughter's July 19 wedding, driving her 96-year-old aunt on her errands, and caring for her husband, who is waiting for a liver transplant, she is reminded daily of rising prices for food and fuel.

"I used to get in and drive any time, anywhere I wanted to," she recalled, shaking her head. "It's a hard thing all around."

At the same time, Pittsburghers can find plenty of reasons to feel less gloomy than the rest of the country. Worth remembering is that the current slowdown is nowhere close to what the region experienced during a historic manufacturing decline two and half decades ago.

In 1982, Beaver County peaked with an unemployment rate of about 28 percent, and all of southwestern Pennsylvania bottomed out at 17.1 percent unemployment in January 1983, according to regional economist Chris Briem at the University of Pittsburgh's Center for Social and Urban Research. The region's unemployment rate today stands at 5 percent.

Not only is the region's unemployment rate currently lower than the state and national averages, it is also well below other Rust Belt cities such as Detroit (9.3 percent in May) and Cleveland (7.3 percent). Meanwhile, some of Pittsburgh's traditional industries of metals and coal are seeing record demand and prices for their products. And the region actually created 3,200 new jobs in May 2008 (compared to May 2007), a month when 14 of the country's 40 largest metropolitan areas lost jobs.

Also worth noting is the relative stability of the local housing market. While the pace of local sales activity is the slowest in a decade, real estate prices actually increased by 4.7 percent in May 2008 (compared to May 2007) as other U.S. metropolitan areas grappled with double-digit price declines.

The likelihood of local housing price decreases over the next two years is less than 1 percent, according to a new report from Walnut Creek, Calif.-based PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. Of the top 50 metro areas measured, only Fort Worth, Texas, and Dallas had lower risks of declines. Southern California's Riverside area has a 95.5 percent chance of lower prices in two years and Florida's Fort Lauderdale region is second with a 92.2 percent chance.

"I think there are clearly reasons to feel less gloomy here," said Downtown management consultant Harold Miller, via e-mail. "Whether that means that people actually do it is another question."

Mr. Miller also noted that Pittsburgh has shorter commuting times and less traffic congestion than many other cities of a similar size. "I suspect higher gas prices hit people a little less hard, proportionately, than they would if they lived in other regions," he said.

Phil Diviney, of Cecil, Washington County, said his family is "doing fine" despite high gas and food prices and 5-year old twins. Both he and his wife are employed, and have invested in a gas-free heat pump to warm their house. They also plan to buy a more fuel-efficient car.

Dusty Cassidy, 32, said the gloomy economic news is not weighing on her South Park family. "So far, we're doing OK," she said, noting that her husband's day care business is relatively insulated from tough economic times. "People need our services. They have to get to work" and they need someone to watch their children, she said.

That doesn't mean she isn't more cautious. Among her sacrifices are visits to a family property in West Virginia.

"We never go," she said. "It would cost $80 to get there."