The FINANCIAL — After dipping to a two-year low last month, the number of Americans who expect to pay higher interest rates next year has returned to levels found earlier in 2011.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of American Adults shows that 57% believe they will be paying higher interest rates in a year’s time, up eight points from June when 49% felt that way. Prior to last month, this finding ranged from 50% to 59% since July 2009.
Only six percent (6%) expect lower interest rates in a year’s time, while 27% believe they will remain about the same. Another 10% aren’t sure.
Twenty-nine percent (29%) of adults say they are paying higher interest rates now than they were a year ago, up slightly from last month but the highest finding since January. Only 12% say their interest rates are lower than a year ago. Most adults (55%) still say the interest rates they are paying now are about the same as they were last year.
Since April 2009, roughly half of adults nationwide have reported paying about the same interest rates as they were the previous year.
Twenty-eight percent (28%) say they owe more money than they did a year ago, a figure that has not changed in three months. But only 31% say they owe less money today, the lowest finding in a year. Another 36% say they owe about the same amount of money as they did a year ago.
The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on July 11-12, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.
Americans who work for private companies are more likely to expect higher interest rates next year than government workers and entrepreneurs.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of investors say they’ll be paying higher interest rates in a year’s time, along with 61% of non-investors who feel this way.
Men are more likely than women to believe they’ll be paying higher interest rates in the future. But males and females are evenly divided when it comes to owing more money than a year ago.
Trust in the U.S. banking industry has steadily slipped over the past three months, and the number of Americans that lack confidence now outweighs the number that is confident.
One-in-five working Americans continue to classify themselves as poor, while the number of those who consider themselves middle class has fallen to a two-year low.
Last November, the Rasmussen Employment Index capped four months of improvement by reaching its highest level since February 2008. At that time, the number of workers who reported their firms were hiring (20.5%) was nearly equal to the number reporting layoffs (20.7%). That was the best net hiring number (-0.2) since the financial industry melted down in September 2008. It also turns out to be the peak of the post-bailout era.
Voters continue to say President Obama is doing a better job on national security issues than economic issues, but his marks in both areas have improved slightly over the past several weeks.
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