Despite the ongoing pandemic, positive sentiments are the strongest they have been in several years
With the economy recovering at a brisk pace, Canadians have grown increasingly confident towards their long-term employment and housing market prospects.
As of the week ending July 23, the Bloomberg-Nanos Canadian Confidence Index stood at 65.98 versus the 65.78 reading four weeks prior. This was only slightly lower than the 12-month high, which is currently at 66.42.
“As Canadian enterprises and households continue to receive stimulus support from the government, [confidence towards] personal finances and job security has hit a level not seen since January 2015,” said Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research.
The majority of Canadians (55.39%) believe that the value of real estate in their neighbourhood will grow in the next half-year, while 31.38% are not expecting any changes. Only 9.2% believe that home prices will drop during this period.
When asked about their personal finances over the past year, 25.33% said that they were better off, while 23.89% said that they were worse off. Approximately 49.8% reported experiencing no changes in this regard.
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More than half (56.53%) said that they feel secure in their current jobs, and 15.98% are at least somewhat secure. Meanwhile, around 3.39% are somewhat not secure, and 6.71% do not feel secure.
Around 49.62% of respondents believe that the economy will become stronger in the coming months, while 23.19% believe that it will become weaker. Another 22.16% are expecting no major changes in the current economic environment in the near future.
