{"id":789066,"date":"2026-07-28T09:57:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T09:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/789066\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T09:57:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T09:57:28","slug":"why-businesses-report-cautious-optimism-as-consumers-feel-blue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/789066\/","title":{"rendered":"Why businesses report cautious optimism as consumers feel blue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Compared to the first quarter of this year, businesses said sales improved in the second quarter of this year, according to a fresh survey<\/a> from the National Association for Business Economics. On average, businesses said they\u2019re raising prices, and operations are more efficient.<\/p>\n

For consumers, that rosy picture might seem odd, given the war with Iran, the seesawing price of fuel and other inputs, and the inflation rate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To be clear, businesses didn\u2019t report a glowing economic outlook. It was more of a tempered-but-optimistic picture.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Businesses are] cautious, but they\u2019re not contracting,\u201d said Nich Tremper, senior economist at payroll processor Gusto.<\/p>\n

He said yes, revenue is higher, but so are expenses \u2014 so profit margins are staying pretty flat. The real show of confidence, Tremper said, is that businesses are still hiring people.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don’t hire into a recession,\u201d he said. \u201c[Businesses] are not seeing things that are making them worry about the future or or stop hiring. Frankly, that’s the biggest bet that somebody can make, and it’s something that we’re seeing month over month.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this cautiously optimistic picture from businesses came in the same quarter that the University of Michigan reported consumer sentiment at a record low<\/a>. In other words, the sellers feel fine, while the buyers are feeling worried.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has been the landscape for years now,\u201d said Holly Wade, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center. <\/p>\n

She said the biggest impact to a business is its sales. <\/p>\n

\u201cConsumers are still out there spending,<\/a> and businesses are still investing, and that’s what drives, you know, business conditions,\u201d Wade said.<\/p>\n

The reason both can be true at the same time is, in short, inflation.<\/p>\n

\u201cInflation impacts consumers and businesses simultaneously,\u201d said Lester Jones, a survey research economist with the National Association for Business Economics, which put out the survey. <\/p>\n

He said inflation makes the labor market tight<\/a>: \u201cWe know unemployment numbers are down. We know that wages continue to rise.\u201d<\/p>\n

And as wages rise, consumers can buy more stuff. But that also makes inflation worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re in a little bit of a dance right now between consumers, between businesses, between these global economic events that are kind of moving things forward,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n

For now, he said, it looks like businesses and consumers will keep on dancing. Because businesses in the survey also said they expect sales and profits on average to keep rising.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Compared to the first quarter of this year, businesses said sales improved in the second quarter of this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,335588,335587,18087,101,275324],"class_list":["post-789066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-business-optimism","tag-business-outlook","tag-consumer-sentiment","tag-economy","tag-nabe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}