Finance & economics | Miserable consumers

Households across the rich world have never been so gloomy

They seem to be suffering from a covid-19 comedown

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 25: Pedestrians walk by a boarded-up business on August 25, 2022 in San Francisco, California. According to a U.C. Berkeley study, San Francisco's financial district is having a poor recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The city is having the worst recovery out of 62 North American cities and has only seeing 31 percent of pre-pandemic activity. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Sep 22nd 2022

Last summer people felt good. Unemployment was falling, wages were growing, and everyone could eat indoors and travel again. Little surprise, then, that consumer confidence across the rich world was above its long-term average. This summer has been very different. People are astonishingly downbeat—more so even than during the global financial crisis of 2007-09 or the first lockdowns of 2020 (see chart).

This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “The covid comedown”