Comments 1 - 2 of 2        Search these comments

1   HEY YOU   2017 Aug 23, 8:35am  

Access the premium content on this site.
2   NDrLoR   2017 Aug 23, 8:39am  


Economic confidence gets an August uptick

WASHINGTON, D.C.
August 22, 2017 9:01pm

• Current conditions component hits nine-year high
• Economic outlook component positive for first time since April

Americans' confidence in the economy has strengthened this month, according to polling by Gallup Inc. Last week, Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index averaged +11, up three points from the previous week. The index has increased by nine points over the past three weeks and is now at its highest level since mid-March. Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index is the average of two components: how Americans rate current economic conditions and whether they believe the economy is improving or getting worse. The index has a theoretical maximum of +100 if all Americans were to say the economy is doing well and improving, and a theoretical minimum of -100 if all were to say the economy is doing poorly and getting worse. Americans' economic perceptions have been mostly positive throughout 2017, a change from the years of the Great Recession and the economy’s slow climb from the depths, when pessimism prevailed. Still, the Economic Confidence Index has had some ups and downs in 2017, Gallup notes. After hitting a nine-year high of +16 in early March, the index declined throughout the spring. For much of the summer, confidence hovered near zero, the neutral midpoint for the index -- indicating that Americans had highly mixed views about the state of the economy. But this month, confidence has rallied. Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index jumped five points during the week of July 31-August 6, coinciding with the Dow Jones industrial average finishing above 22,000 for the first time. Subsequent economic news in August may have solidified or expanded economic confidence, including last week's report that U.S. retail sales rose 0.6 percent in July, the best one-month gain for this indicator in seven months. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also announced that weekly jobless claims fell to a six-month low for the week ending Aug. 12. Amid the bundle of good economic news, Americans' perceptions about the current state of the economy reached a post-recession high last week, Gallup says. For the week ending August 20, more than a third (37 percent) of Americans described economic conditions as "excellent" or "good," while 19 percent rated conditions as "poor." As a result, the current conditions component stood at +18, up slightly from +16 the week before. Americans' economic expectations turned positive last week for the first time since April, with the outlook component rising four points to +3. This reflects 48 percent of Americans saying the economy is "getting better" and 45 percent saying it is "getting worse."

Survey methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted August 14-20, 2017, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 3,509 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 70 percent cellphone respondents and 30 percent landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.

Please register to comment:

api   best comments   contact   latest images   memes   one year ago   random   suggestions