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Economic confidence improves

WASHINGTON, D.C.
August 8, 2017 9:03pm

• Best weekly index score since mid-April
• Economic outlook improved but to a smaller degree

Americans' confidence in the economy jumped five points last week, according to polling by Gallup Inc. Its proprietary “U.S. Economic confidence Index” averaged +7 for the week ending August 6. The latest weekly index score is the highest since mid-April. This bump in economic confidence, recorded mostly before last Friday's positive jobs report, comes as the Dow Jones industrial average surpassed the 22,000 milestone. Since mid-April, the Economic Confidence Index has remained within a range of zero to +5. While last week's score of +7 is not as high as the double-digit scores seen in the initial months after last year's election, it remains well above the mostly negative scores Gallup recorded from 2008 to 2016, when the Great Recession and then the sour outlook of Republicans more than offset any Democrat positive vibes.

Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is the average of two components: how Americans rate current economic conditions and whether they feel 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. Last week, the current conditions component was +15 -- up six points from the previous week and the best score for this component since mid-March, Gallup says. This score is the result of 35 percent of Americans describing the economy as "excellent" or "good" and 20 percent describing it as "poor." The economic outlook component, meanwhile, improved to a smaller degree, averaging -2 last week. This is based on 46 percent of Americans saying economic conditions in the country are "getting better" and 48 percent saying they are "getting worse." This component has been consistently negative since May, ranging between -2 and -8. It was positive for most weeks from mid-November to mid-March.

Survey methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 31-August 6, 2017, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 3,514 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.