American Pulse Survey: 75% of Consumers Not Yet Ready to Spend

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 10/26/2010 2:58:34 AM

COLUMBUS, OHIO - The latest American Pulse Survey of 5,199 respondents found that 75.2% have little to no confidence that the government's economic policies will get the economy's recovery rolling, and 77.1% said they aren't ready to start spending like they did prior to the recession.
     Furthermore, 39.7% of Americans surveyed said strong political divides in the U.S. will make it impossible to overcome the current economic situation. However, 27.6% don't agree, and 32.7% don't know.
     The American Pulse Survey, which is collected online by consumer research firm BigResearch twice a month, noted it is "likely that Americans still feel knee-deep in the recession," with 78.6% claiming they have lost wealth in the past two years," while only 21.4% said they don't feel they've lost their wealth.
     The top three reasons for this perceived drop in wealth, the survey found: value of home declined (46.8%); lost job (40.1%); and interest rates on savings declined (38.2%).
     With that in mind, most Americans surveyed -- 80.9% -- said they don't think the recession is over, versus the 9.3% who said they do think it has ended and the 9.9% who don't know.
     Although the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the end of the recession as June 2009, 71.1% feel that the American people are the most qualified to decide when the economy has rebounded, not economists (15.9%).