United Kingdom Business Confidence

Last Release

Jun 30, 2025

Actual

-33

Units In

Points

-47

Frequency

Quarterly

Next Release

Jul 25, 2025

Time to Release

2 Months 29 Days 9 Hours

Highest	Lowest	Average	Date Range	Source
55 Sep 1959	-87 Jun 2020	-4.51 Points	1958-2025	N/A

In the United Kingdom, the Business Optimism Index is published by the Confederation of British Industry's in its Industrial Trends Survey. An average of 400 small, medium and large companies from the manufacturing sector is surveyed each quarter. The Questionnaire accesses the overall sentiment regarding general and export business situation, investment, capacity, order books, employment, output, stocks, prices competitiveness regarding domestic, EU and non-EU markets and innovation and training. For each assessment is computed a sub-index as the percentage of positive answers minus the percentage of negative answers. The composite index is then computed as the weighted average of the sub-indices. An Optimism Index of +100 indicates that all survey respondents are much more confident about future prospects, while -100 suggests that all survey respondents are much less confident about future prospects. An index level of 0 indicates neutrality.

Latest Updates

Sentiment in the UK manufacturing sector fell to -33 in April of 2025 according to the index compiled by the Confederation of British Industry, extending the deterioration of -47 from the previous moving quarter to mark the fourth consecutive quarter of pessimism. Manufacturing output continued to decline (-2 vs -18 in January), and surveyed firms noted that production levels are likely to continue decreasing halfway through the year (-5). Consistently, new orders remained firmly in the negative territory (-13 vs -20) amid lower demand both domestically (-11 vs -23) and from foreign markets (-4 vs -33), driving firms to continue shedding jobs (-16 vs -8). On the price front, input costs accelerated (48 vs 43), and is expected to continue rising through July (53).