From: www.kamcity.com
Consumer confidence in Britain has dived a further 9 points since last October, reports market research company Nielsen & the British Retail Consortium (BRC). The fall in confidence has been directly driven by virtual universal uncertainty about the job market and job prospects in the coming year.
86% of people polled in Great Britain said they felt negatively about job prospects in the next 12 months, with 42% saying they felt that job prospects will be ‘bad’ for the coming year. This is up from 23% last October and 10% in October 2007.
Furthermore, more people than ever before feel that their own personal finances will be bad (17%) or not so good (49%) in the coming months. When asked if now was a good time to spend on things they want and need, 47% of people said they thought now was not a good time to spend and a further 23% said they thought now was a bad time to spend.
Justin Sargent, Managing Director Nielsen, UK commented, “Many people have now had some sort of first hand experience of job losses either within their own workplace or through friends or family members loosing jobs so it is little wonder why almost 9 out of 10 people think that job prospects look grim for the coming year. With such concerns and little hope of pay increases for many of those in employment, it makes sense that confidence in personal finances and the impetus to spend has also suffered.”
When asked about their biggest concern, respondents said job security (20%), the economy (19%) and debt (13%) were their biggest worries. Job security was the biggest growing concern; when this survey was polled in October 2008, only 4% of people cited job security as their biggest concern. Conversely, as prices have begun to fall slightly, worries over utility bills (4th) have decreased in the last six months, from 21% in October to 9% currently. Worries over rising food prices and petrol prices have also fallen over the same period.
Most people now understand that the country is in a recession, with 98% of people saying this. Only 13% of people think we will come out of recession in the next 12 months.
When asked what they do with disposable income the top answer was ‘put into savings’ (35%) and holidays (30%), however, less people say they spend on these and all other options than has been recorded previously indicating that more people are spending less across the board. The number of people saying they don’t have any spare cash increased significantly and now around a quarter of people say they don’t have any spare cash after they have covered essential living expenses.
The survey also signalled more woes to come for leisure industries with the number of people saying they spend spare cash on out of home entertainment falling from 26% last October to 17% in April. Back in 2006, 30% of people spent on out of home entertainment.
“It is easy to see why the leisure industry, for example, is suffering so much as consumers use ‘cutting back on out of home entertainment’ as one of their main ways to save money,” said Sargent
>> PROFESSIONAL HELP WITH DEBT <<
.jpg)