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November 27, 2019 In November, the consumer confidence climate marked a "marked decline", with the index falling to 108.5% from 111.5 in October. Istat points this out, explaining that this is the lowest level since July 2017. "The negative trend is determined by the worsening of judgments and expectations on the Italian economic situation as well as by the increase in expectations on unemployment", a growing view. So much so that by concentrating only on how families look at the country's health conditions, there is a minimum since January 2015.

The reason for the decline
The decrease in the consumer confidence index, explains Istat, is the synthesis of negative trends of all its components (the economic climate decreases from 127.2 to 116.3, the current climate drops from 107.9 to 106 , 8 and the future climate dropped from 116.1 to 110.2), except for the personal climate, where the index increased slightly from 105.4 to 105.8.

Business confidence increases
As for the companies, there are signs of uncertainty from the industry, while for the services there is a substantial stability of the indices. More in detail, the index decreased slightly in the manufacturing sector (from 99.5 to 98.9) and dropped from 141.3 to 137.1 in construction; in market services, the index remains at 99.6 as in the previous month and in retail trade remains substantially stable (from 108.3 to 108.2).

The manufacturing and construction sectors
Moving on to analyze the components of business confidence climates, in the manufacturing industry the deterioration of the index derives from judgments on orders and worsening production expectations; the balance of the opinions on stocks is decreasing. In construction, the negative evolution of the index is determined by the worsening of the opinions on orders and, above all, by a decisive reduction in employment expectations.

Services
In the market services sector, there was an improvement in assessments and expectations on orders; the opinions on the business trend are instead deteriorating. With reference to retail trade, the slight decrease in the confidence index is driven by the deterioration in assessments and sales expectations to which judgments on improving stocks are added.