The economy is growing at 4 percent per year. Unemployment is down. But that’s not always how the economy feels, day to day.

Lisa Goldenberg is the president of Delaware Steel Company of Pennsylvania, where she has a front-row seat to how the economic outlook is making life easier — or harder — for businesses. In a July interview, Goldenberg lamented that things weren’t going as well as she had hoped. She has that same grinding sense of progress today.

“We should have had a stronger September. We’re doing okay, but okay isn’t good enough. It’s a struggle,” Goldenberg says.

The bright spots: construction, energy and cars.

“For the steel business, construction is a good thing,” Goldenberg says. “People go out, they need washers and dryers made out of steel.”

But are things better than July? No, she says. People have a little more money to spend, but not enough to pay off debts from the past few years. And definitely not enough savings to buy a house.

“It’s painful to live through slow, even, deliberate growth,” Goldenberg says. But even so, “it’s the best way, in my opinion, to build a solid economy.”