The White House mantra may be that the national economy is steadily improving, but nearly six in 10 Americans aren’t buying that line.

Almost 60 percent of respondents in a new CNN/ORC International survey released Tuesday morning say the economy is poor now — and will be equally dismal in 2014.

The government shutdown helped ring in the dire alert, CNN reported. And its dismal findings comes just hours before the U.S. Labor Department is due to release its September’s unemployment numbers. The data was delayed due to the shutdown.

Survey specifics: Fully 71 percent who participated in the survey, which questioned 841 adults by telephone between Friday and Sunday, said the present economy is subpar. Only 29 percent said the economy is good — and that’s a 4 percentage point drop from just a few weeks ago, before the shutdown.

“That number has not been particularly high in 2013, but throughout the year it has always been over 30 percent, making the current level of 29 percent the worst number since December of last year,” CNN polling director Keating Holland said in the CNN report.

Moreover, only 40 percent predict a better economy in a year — and that’s a drop from 50 percent predicting better times in June. That’s the lowest optimism level recorded since October 2011, pollsters said. Fifty-nine percent said the economy will continue a path of poor showing into next fall, CNN reported.

The survey has a plus or minus sampling error of 3.5 percentage points.

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