It’s raining in London. I bet it’s raining all over the UK. It is, after all, mid-September.
The tail-end of summer is much like the rest of summer: a little damp, a little grey, and a little disappointing. It isn’t just the weather. All around there are signs of the rhythm of the year dragging us into autumn – schools going back and airports returning to normal capacity. Suspiciously large volumes of space being cleared in supermarkets to make way for Halloween and Christmas items. University campuses readying themselves for the return of students. Colleagues drifting back into the office after two weeks of freedom somewhere in the Mediterranean. The nights are drawing in and pretty soon we’re going to have to turn the heating on.
Grim. Perhaps this is what people are thinking about when they tell us how optimistic they are in August. 2023 is the fifth summer in a row when UK consumers have got less optimistic about the future in August compared to July. There is no other time of the year that so consistently sees this pattern.1
In recent editions we’ve drawn on some pretty long term data to support our ongoing analysis of things that either aren’t changing or are changing slowly. Last week we looked at the weight of footballs, with a chart going back to the 1880s, and previously we’ve looked at trends in marriage (going back to the 1840s) and trust (going back to the 1980s). Beginning our analysis in 2018, as we do here, is pretty recent for this newsletter. But as we’ll argue, this trend is as likely to endure as the others we’ve discussed.
In every year since 2019 there has been a fall in overall levels of Optimism in August compared to July.2 This is regardless of the relative level of Optimism (pretty high in 2019 and 2021, pretty low in 2022 and 2023), the stability of the trend in the months before (very flat in 2020, oscillating wildly in 2019) and even what happened after August (continued decline 2021 and 2022, recovery 2020).
There’s something about August which causes a drop in sentiment. We get a bit less positive at the height of summer – just as we’re supposed to be having the most fun.
There’s a few reasons why this might be the case. August is one of the those months that, for millions of people, feels different to the rest of the year. With parliament on recess the news focusses on things other than politics, and absent a major tournament, football is no longer the oil in the engine of sports bulletins and content. TV schedules are changed and some new releases on subscription platforms are held back to account for the fact that viewing is less regularised. There are also reasons why those changes might make us less positive. School holidays mean working parents have to juggle childcare with their day jobs. Holidays are expensive and stressful. That much-longed-for heatwave doesn’t materialise.
What does this mean?
The routines that govern our day-to-day life - such as the academic year, our working hours, and even TV and news schedules – become a little less fixed in the summer, especially August. Do we miss this routine when it isn’t there? Or maybe it’s about expectation management. Having looked forward to the summer all year, perhaps when it arrives it disappoints.
August appears to be the point at which we start looking ahead to the winter – particularly in the Optimism Index, which is a deliberately future-facing measure of sentiment. For some, strategies for coping with higher bills over winter, or covering Christmas costs, might start here. Even for those facing fewer financial stresses, the practical pressures of autumn and winter might cause heads to droop.
Declines in sentiment in August are likely to be a recurring theme – for all the reasons we’ve outlined above. Some years, they’ll be amplified by current events – whether that’s the impasse in the Brexit wars, as in 2019, or rocketing inflation, as in 2022 – but the seasonal impacts of dampened expectations, heightened stress and a sense that summer is over before it has started will always feature.
So, if you (or your customers) are a little more downbeat next August, it’s not a surprise – it’s just part of the rhythm of the year.
The Optimism Index has been taking the temperature of the UK public every month since January 2018. If you’d like to find out more about how you can access the data, reports and other findings, just get in touch.
There are some other observable seasonality effects in the data – including that we often get a bit more Optimistic at the start of the year and the start of spring – but they are not nearly as consistent as the July-August decline.
The exception, clearly, is 2018. Several things happened that summer that may have helped to boost Optimism, including a heatwave (which ended in early August) and the unexpected progress of England in the men’s FIFA World Cup. It’s also, crucially, the last period before Brexit caused an 18-month parliamentary deadlock.
This is really interesting and brilliantly counterintuitive! Do you observe any trends in September attitudes? Is there a re-set/rebound effect? Lots of people see September as their personal ‘new year’ and fresh start moment. I’d love to hear if you see any trends that support or deny this. Thanks for the great, thought provoking content as always.