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Canadian Consumer Confidence Strengthens on Brighter One Year Outlook

The latest Harris Decima Investors Group measure of Canadian Consumer Confidence reveals:

  • The overall index of Consumer Confidence in the Canadian economy rose in the period from June to August to 86.5, the highest the index has been in almost two years. In the United States, the index reached 65.7, a slight drop from June.
    Harris/Decima-Investors Group Consumer Confidence Index
  • Optimism about the near-term economic outlook in Canada continues to grow as pessimism continues to drop sharply. The number who see good times ahead overall in the coming year jumped to 29% from the 20% recorded in June while 49% of respondents believed business conditions wouldn’t change much in the coming year, Meanwhile, only 15% foresaw more difficult economic times over the next 12 month period compared to 29% in June and 59% in February of this year.
  • 30% of Canadians believe they will be better off financially a year from now, while 9% believe they will be worse off. 55% believe they will be about the same financially a year from now. The number of Canadians who believe they will be better off financially a year from now is up 5 points from June where 25% believed they’d be better off.
  • The number of Canadians who say they are worse off today than they were last year, dropped slightly to 25%, from the 29% recorded in June. Once again, people are far more likely to say they are about the doing about the same financially as they were last year (61%). 12% feel they are better off financially compared to a year ago, relatively unchanged since June.
  • Canadians continue to be more optimistic about making a major purchase. Today, 52% believe it is a good time to make a major purchase, while 33% feel it is a bad time to buy. These numbers represent a slight increase in optimism from the 49%-34% split registered in June.
  • Optimism continues to grow in terms of the five year economic outlook. Today, 58% see good times ahead in the next five years, while 28% see bad times. In June, this split was 51%-36%.
    Positive Sentiment and Negative Sentiment

According to Harris/Decima Senior Vice-President Jeff Walker, “The most recent data reveals a continued upward trend in consumer confidence that we’ve witnessed in the last few months. Canadians continue to grow more confident in future of the economy in the medium term, which is driving overall confidence upward. Confidence continues to grow at the microeconomic level, with more Canadians believing they’ll be better of personally a year from now than just 3 months ago”

“Confident consumers are spending consumers,” said Bill Chornous, Investment Strategist at Investors Group. “Consumer spending, particularly in the United States, is an important factor in the recovery and growth of the economy.”

Each week, Harris/Decima interviews just over 1000 Canadians through teleVox, the company’s national omnibus survey. These data were gathered August 20th through August 30th 2009 for a sample of just over 2,000 respondents. The poll’s margin of error is 2.2%, 19 times out of 20.