LONDON — Economic optimism continues to be a scarce commodity in the United Kingdom, with 21% of Britons last year saying their local economy is “getting better,” ranking it among the world’s least optimistic populations in 2025.
Of the 139 countries and territories where Gallup asked this question in 2025, only Lebanon (10%), Bolivia (15%) and Türkiye (17%) rank statistically lower than the U.K. for the percentage of adults who said their local economic conditions are improving. Adults in Malawi and the State of Palestine (both 20%) and Northern Cyprus (21%) scored similarly, along with high-income France (21%) and Hong Kong (23%).
Many of these places, including Lebanon, Bolivia and the State of Palestine, have experienced economic collapse in recent years, compared with the U.K.’s relative economic stagnation. While these perceptions are all relative, the comparison speaks to the depth of economic malaise in the U.K. The International Monetary Fund recently forecast that the U.K. will be hit harder than any other advanced economy because of the energy shock from the Iran war, reinforcing concerns about the country’s near-term outlook, particularly ahead of local elections next week.
U.K. More Pessimistic Than Almost All Other Advanced Economies
This is the second consecutive year that roughly one in five Britons have said their economy is improving — 19% thought this was the case in 2024. The current lack of optimism is in line with 2009 (21%) during the global financial crash. But unlike that one-year episode, this time, there has been no quick rebound.
The U.K. languishes behind most other advanced economies in people’s perceptions of their local economy. Across the 38 members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a median of 39% said their local economy is getting better, on par with 2024. U.K. sentiment, once broadly in line with the OECD, has become increasingly detached.
The U.K. has fallen behind the OECD in economic optimism despite the two having similar economic performance. Over the past two decades, the U.K.’s annual gross domestic product growth has closely tracked the OECD average.
Public opinion does not neatly align with objective economic data such as GDP. Overall economic output can grow, but if people don’t generally feel its effects in their daily lives, increased economic optimism is unlikely to follow. Even though many other advanced economies have been affected by sluggish growth in recent years, public opinion in these countries has remained more buoyant than in the U.K.
Economic Optimism in Short Supply Among All Age Groups
Britons of all ages are feeling gloomy about the state of their local economy. Adults aged 15 to 34 (23%), 35 to 54 (24%), and 55 and older (17%) all feel similarly pessimistic about local economic conditions. For the past decade, optimism has declined in a relatively similar fashion across age groups, contrasting with the previous decade when younger Britons were consistently the most optimistic generation.
Even in 2009, during the financial crisis, Britons aged 15 to 34 were more optimistic (32% “getting better”) than those aged 35 to 54 (18%) and 55 and older (15%), but this gap has now closed.
Fewer Britons Living Comfortably
Though Britons’ sense of economic optimism has been trending downward since around 2014, their feelings about their own household income have moved in a somewhat different direction. Over the past decade, the percentage of U.K. adults who said they were living comfortably on their income rose gradually, peaking at 52% in 2022 before the cost-of-living crisis started to bite. It has since fallen by 10 percentage points to 42%. No other OECD country has seen a bigger decline over the same period.
This is the first time that the OECD median has nominally overtaken the U.K. for the share of adults reporting living comfortably, after the U.K. scored above average for advanced economies for each previous year.
U.K. Economic Pessimism Aligns With Wider Declines in Hope
Britons have soured on the economy at the same time their hope for the future has declined. For the past two years, U.K. adults have averaged a 7.1 out of 10 in terms of rating how good their lives will be in the next five years, significantly lower than the 7.8 recorded in the early days of the Gallup World Poll.
Since 2022 and the onset of the cost-of-living crisis, Britons have ranked below the OECD average in their hope for the future.
Bottom Line
The U.K. has the sixth-largest economy in the world, yet it ranks among the 10 least optimistic countries globally in residents’ ratings of their local economy. Despite posting GDP growth figures broadly in line with the OECD average for many years, Britons have grown far more negative than almost every other advanced economy.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer was elected on a manifesto framed around restoring hope and reviving economic growth. So far, British public opinion remains as gloomy as it was before he took power. Much of the U.K. votes in local elections on May 7, the first major election since Labour won in 2024. Local contests are often fought on different terms than national elections, but entrenched pessimism about life and the economy is a difficult backdrop for any ruling party to overcome.
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