Americans’ confidence in the U.S. economy is waning as the highly contagious delta variant drives a COVID-19 surge nationwide.
That’s according to a new survey published Friday by Gallup, which found that 60% of respondents think the economy is worsening, compared to just 37% who think it’s improving. In July, about 54% of Americans said they thought the economic outlook was deteriorating, while 41% believed it was getting better.
Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index, which summarizes Americans’ views of the economy, also fell from -6 to -12, the same level of the gauge in February. Although it remains better than the pandemic low of -33, it’s a far way from the +41 it sat at in February 2020, before the virus triggered the deepest – and shortest – recession in U.S. history.
The gauge is measured on a scale of -100 to +100.
There was a partisan divide in whether Americans believed the economic outlook was brightening or not: Confidence among Republicans and independents dropped in August, but not among Democrats.
