Falling economic optimism

A couple of interesting YouGov findings in yesterday's Sun and this morning's Times. Both had questions about perceptions of the state of the economy, and both showed a stark decline since earlier in the year. Regular readers will remember that there had been a pattern of the public still being pessimistic about their personal finances, but becoming more optimistic about the state of the economy as a whole. That appears to have changed.

In the YouGov Sun poll poll yesterday 25% of people expected the economy to get better in the year ahead, down from 39% in March. 32% expected it to get worse, up from 23% (tabs here.)

A similar poll for the Times RedBox done a day later found the proportion of people thinking the economy was either on the way to recovery or showing signs of recovery was down to 40% from 50% in August, and the percentage of people thinking the economy was getting worse was up from 13% to 22% (tabs here.)

Both questions were run prior to the government's Autumn Statement, and while I doubt many people actually watch it the media coverage of the economy over the last few days may yet make a difference - either positive or negative. Beyond that, as with most political events, I wouldn't expect the Autumn Statement to make much difference.