The Grant Thornton Business Optimism Index is a confidence measure of U.S. business leaders. The Index is a composite score for three questions:
- U.S. economy: Do you feel the U.S. economy will improve/remain the same/get worse in the next six months?
- Business growth: How optimistic are you about the growth of your own business over the next six months – very/somewhat optimistic/pessimistic?
- Employment: Do you expect the number of people you employ will increase/remain the same/decrease in the next six months?
Each response is assigned a value of -1 (get worse, very pessimistic, decrease), 0 (remain the same, somewhat optimistic/pessimistic), or +1 (improve, very optimistic, increase). The Business Optimism Index is the aggregate of these three measures, indexed to a scale from 0 to 100.
When do you think the economy will come out of recession?
In addition to the regular three Business Optimism Index questions, Grant Thornton asked senior U.S. business executives when they thought the country would come out of the recession. Click here to see the results.
November 2009 results
Index |
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Business growth --Trend chart  Employment  |
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