As coronavirus restrictions ease, will the economic life of consumers snap back to normal? Electoral Calculus and pollster Find Out Now conducted an exclusive poll for The Property Chronicle to find out.

Our findings show that consumers expect their household finances to worsen in the next year and they also expect to be hurt by inflation on their non-discretionary spending. The outlook for discretionary spending does not look very positive, even for those sectors which might have expected a post-covid bounce.

The demographic breakdown of the economic pain is also bad news for the incumbent Conservative Government.

Let’s look at the findings in more detail.

We asked people to think about their household finances and whether they expected to be better or worse off in the coming year compared with last year. Overall, 57% of people thought that they would be worse off and only 13% thought they would be better off. There were 20% of people who thought they would be about the same and some 10% who didn’t give an answer.

The first chart shows that many more people are pessimistic rather than optimistic about their financial prospects. This pessimism could be because people think inflation and increased taxes will squeeze their budgets. These worries seem to outweigh the possible gains from the end to public health restrictions on economic activities such as entertainment and travel.