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ON Tuesday, the Jamaica Chamber of Commerce released its third quarter business and consumer confidence reports. Business confidence collapsed to its lowest level since the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009, its third lowest level ever since survey's began in 2001. Consumer confidence also declined sharply, to its second lowest level since surveys began 12 years ago, barely above the all time low set in 2003. For both, unemployment and the falling value of the Jamaican dollar were the primary concerns. Unusually, both consumers and business had an almost identically grim assessment of current conditions and expectations, with 62 per cent of firms expecting the economy to worsen in the year ahead, and remarkably, just one out of a hundred consumers considering jobs to be plentiful.
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