Chart of the Week: UK Economic Sentiment Nudges Higher in May

Our UK Economic Sentiment Indicator (UK ESI), which distills information from numerous consumer and business surveys, nudged up to 0.6% in May.

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Unwinding much of the recent softness, the vast majority of survey respondents were more confident than at any point over the last few months. But both households and businesses continue to report being more confident in their personal prospects than those of the economy, with the former significantly so. Related to this, there has been a marked deviation between survey-based measures of economic activity and hard data for much of the past year. Nevertheless, we expect that gap to close, with sentiment falling toward official measures of growth.

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