Story Highlights
- Confidence still above pre-election levels but below recent highs
- Current conditions component at +12; economic outlook at -2
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- With Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index standing at +5 last week, U.S. adults remained slightly optimistic about the state of the economy, though this optimism is not as widespread as it was earlier this year. The Economic Confidence Index has remained primarily in the low single digits since peaking at +16 in early March.
Already on the rise after last year's presidential election, confidence in the economy hit new highs in the first quarter of the year. In late January, during the first full week of Donald Trump's presidency, Gallup's U.S. Economic Confidence Index posted a nine-year high of +14. This level was surpassed in early March, after Trump touted his economic agenda in a speech to Congress and the Dow Jones industrial average finished above 21,000 for the first time.
But since then, confidence has generally been weaker, mostly attributable to a sharp decline in Democrats' economic assessments as well as a softer decline among independents. In the past 12 weeks, the index has climbed no higher than +5, whereas it finished at +10 or better five times between January and March.
Nonetheless, Americans remain more upbeat about the economy than before the election -- though index scores have diminished somewhat.
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.
Last week, the current conditions component stood at +12, with 34% of Americans assessing the economy as "excellent" or "good" and 22% saying it was "poor." The current conditions score was +11 the prior week.
With 46% of Americans saying the economy was "getting better" and 48% saying it was "getting worse," the outlook component stood at -2 last week. This is up slightly from -5 the week before.
These data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Gallup.com reports results from these indexes in daily, weekly and monthly averages and in Gallup.com stories. Complete trend data are always available to view in the following charts:
Daily: Employment, Economic Confidence, Consumer Spending
Weekly: Employment, Economic Confidence, Job Creation, Consumer Spending
Read more about Gallup's economic measures.
View our economic release schedule.
Survey Methods
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted July 10-16, 2017, on the Gallup U.S. Daily survey, with a random sample of 3,034 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% 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% cellphone respondents and 30% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods.
Learn more about how the Gallup U.S. Daily works.
