Economic sentiment among executives continues to fluctuate amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty, with no clear consensus on either global or home economy outlooks. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey, a roughly equal share of respondents expect global conditions to improve or decline over the next six months, according to McKinsey’s Arvind Govindarajan, Shubham Singhal, Jeffrey Condon, and Krzysztof Kwiatkowski. Executives were similarly split on their home economies’ prospects: 36 percent expect conditions to improve, and another 35 percent expect they will get worse. Compared with the previous survey, more respondents cited inflation and supply chain disruptions as concerns, and many reported that their companies were making operational changes in response to the Strait of Hormuz challenges and trade policy shifts.
Image description.
Two line charts showing respondents' expectations for economic conditions over the next six months from June 2025 to June 2026, comparing the share expecting conditions to be better versus worse. The left chart shows expectations for the global economy. Sentiment fluctuates throughout the period: in June and September 2025, more respondents expect global conditions to worsen than improve; in December 2025, optimism briefly exceeds pessimism; pessimism rises again in March 2026 before narrowing to nearly equal shares by June 2026, with about 38% expecting improvement and 36% expecting deterioration. The right chart shows expectations for respondents' own countries. Views remain closely divided across all survey waves, with optimism slightly exceeding pessimism in June and December 2025, pessimism briefly leading in September 2025, and the two measures converging at roughly 35% to 36% by March and June 2026. Overall, the exhibit shows that expectations for the global economy continue to fluctuate, while views of national economies remain evenly split, with neither optimism nor pessimism consistently prevailing.
This image description was completed with the assistance of Writer, a gen AI tool.
Source: McKinsey Global Surveys on economic conditions, 2025–26.
End of image description.
