KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Likelihood of domestic business travel is up +15% from Oct. 2021
- Americans viewing COVID-19 as less of a threat increased +19%
- More flexible work-life balance compared to before pandemic up to 37%
- 5 crucial "economy driven malaise" metrics reporting record lows
JON LAST: "March of 2020 sure feels like a lot longer than two years ago. Yet that’s when we initiated our nationally acclaimed Back to Normal Barometer, with the expectation that we’d be at it for a few months. Thirty-one waves and some 20,000+ consumer interviews later the Barometer endures, though COVID 19 related concerns seem to have been placed on the backburner in mid-March of 2022.
In our most recently fielded research, less than half of active Americans, when asked to indicate the seriousness of some 14 different issues confronting the country, considered the pandemic to be very serious. In fact, COVID was remarkably the lowest of all concerns, behind even media reporting, the public education system and the perceived degradation of family values. Nearly 2/3 plan to take a domestic business trip in the next six to twelve months, a 15% increase from what we observed last October. Three-quarters of Americans agree that “the pandemic is less of a threat to Americans than it was at this time last year. That’s up nearly twenty points from where we were in January. Just over a third strongly agree that the Omicron variant of COVID is a significant concern; a 23 point drop from October. Nearly three-quarters agree that “In general, the people around me have moved on from being pre-occupied with COVID 19.” And for the first time in five months, more than half now believe we will be back to total pre-pandemic normal before the end of the calendar year. More than nine in ten are back up and participating in those activities that were a large part of their leisure lives prior to the pandemic." READ MORE >>