Business confidence has weakened in the second wave of YouGov's quarterly Business Sentiment Tracker, with businesses becoming less optimistic about the economy, their industries, and their own prospects.

 

YouGov’s Business Sentiment Tracker launched earlier this year, measuring the nation’s enterprises sentiment on the economy, their industry, and their own prospects, with additional questions covering outlook, risk, and AI, among other things.

 

Data from our inaugural tracker reflected a time of great uncertainty, with the war in Iran ramping up and question marks around the future of then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The second edition of our tracker ran over April to June, where some of these questions were more settled (Andy Burnham had won the Makerfield by-election, but was yet to become PM at this stage).

 

The findings point to a broad softening in business sentiment during Q2. Overall sentiment declined from 61.2 to 59.5 (-1.7 points), with all three underlying measures also moving lower. Economic outlook fell from 43.5 to 41.7 (-1.8), while industry outlook – which tracks whether businesses are feeling positive or negative about their own sectors – saw the largest deterioration, from 66.6 to 64.3 (-2.3). When asked about their own fortunes, businesses were also less confident: scores dropped from 71.0 to 69.4 (-0.6).