NEW YORK, June 29, 2020 — The Harris Poll and Yahoo Finance, part of Verizon Media, have formed a partnership to conduct an ongoing poll of investors, market and consumer trends. The surveys will be exclusive data sets for Yahoo Finance and will provide an additional stream of data-based coverage crucial to the over 80 million people who turn to the site every month for financial and business news.

“As market research experts, we understand the link between consumer sentiment and the market performance of brands,” says Will Johnson, CEO of The Harris Poll. “We’re here to help Yahoo Finance readers see that link, so they can be wiser about their investment decisions and achieve their investment goals, whether that’s a secure retirement, the purchase of a home, affording tuition for their children or to launch a new business.”

"Yahoo Finance connects our audience with the best experts, tools and information they need to stay informed, make smart financial decisions and achieve their goals,” said Andy Serwer, Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief. “We're excited to be working with The Harris Poll, one of the most respected names in market research, to delve into and explore topics that are of vital interest to our audience and partners.”

Working with Yahoo Finance editors, researchers at The Harris Poll will poll a representative sample of investors twice a month to detect changes in their outlook and sentiment and, through a series of topical questions, discover their opinions on relevant issues to Yahoo Finance’s readers as they seek to better understand the noisy world around them.

Results of the inaugural Yahoo Finance-The Harris Poll are being published today. Among the key takeaways from the first poll:

• The COVID-19-triggered recession is hitting women harder than men, with only 47% of women saying they are still in the same job they held before the pandemic hits versus 63% of men. Job losses hit Gen X women hardest, with 19% of women ages 35-44 saying they had been laid off or furloughed, compared to just 2% of men in that group.


• Across all age and income groups, Americans are cutting back, with 82% saying they have reduced spending. Again, there is a split between men and women, with 71% of all men predicting their spending will return to normal within a year versus 62% of women. And one in seven women ages 55-64 say they think their spending will never return to normal.


• Individuals are both pessimistic and optimistic when it comes to the markets. Four of 10 people expect their investments will lose value over the next five years, with another 10% foreseeing a gain of less than 5% over that time span. Yet one-third of people are bullish, saying this is a good time to invest in equities.

In 2017, The Harris Poll joined the Stagwell Group to create the largest independent data-driven digital market services firm in the U.S. The Harris Poll is run by Co-CEOs Will Johnson and John Gerzema, two veteran strategists with backgrounds in analytics and brand marketing from senior roles at WPP agencies BAV Consulting and Young & Rubicam.

About Yahoo Finance:

Yahoo Finance, a unit of Verizon Media, is the leading global source of business and finance news. Yahoo Finance’s expert coverage, content and live, daily bell-to-bell programming is available on desktop and mobile web via finance.yahoo.com, as well as the Yahoo Finance app, Android TV, Apple TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV+, Roku and on linear broadcast via Fios.

Read the full story at Yahoo Finance.

Americans have made sweeping changes to their work, spending and investing habits, according to the first installment of the new Yahoo Finance-Harris poll. Yahoo Finance has teamed with Harris to produce monthly insights on consumer and workplace trends as the nation struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic and the punishing recession it has caused.

In the Yahoo Finance – Harris poll, conducted from June 15 to 17, 54% of respondents say they’re currently working from home because of the coronavirus—with 40% working from home full-time and 13% doing so part-time. Just 32% say they’re working at their normal workplace, with no change in routine. And only 4% of those who began working from home because of the virus have returned to their normal work sites, revealing the deep disruptions that remain in America’s work life as coronavirus infections surge to new record highs. (Full results are here.)

Higher-paid and higher-educated workers are more likely to work from home, most likely because they’re concentrated in white collar jobs that don’t require a physical presence or direct contact with customers. Sixty percent of college graduates say they’re working at home full-time because of the virus, compared with just 26% of workers with a high school degree or less. Among workers who earn $100,000 or more, 52% are working from home, compared with 26% of those earning $50,000 or less.

A thin majority of at home workers prefer the change, with 51% saying it’s better than going to their workplace. Thirty percent say it’s worse, with 19% saying it’s about the same.

Ten percent of poll respondents say they’ve lost their job because of the coronavirus, with 3% saying it’s a permanent job loss and 7% saying it’s temporary. Sixteen percent say they’re working fewer hours, with 6% saying they’re working more hours. One concern about the depth and duration of the recession is that some temporary job losses could become permanent. Congress has dispersed trillions of dollars in aid to workers and businesses, with incentives to keep people on the payroll even if they aren’t doing their normal jobs. But some businesses are still likely to fail as the virus threat moves around the country and consumers stay home.

Incomes and Spending are Down:

In the Yahoo Finance-Harris poll, 62% of respondents say their household income has fallen on account of the coronavirus, with 13% saying it has fallen a great deal. Income losses are similar across wealth and education groups, with 64% of more-educated and 62% of less-educated respondents saying they’ve lost income. Among income groups, the percentage losing income was the same for the highest- and lowest-earning groups, at 64%.

Most Americans, not surprisingly have cut back on spending, with 82% saying they’re spending less because of the pandemic, and 20% saying they’ve cut back a great deal. A larger portion of high earners—85%--have cut back on spending, with 79% of the lowest-earning group spending less. That dovetails with new research showing the wealthy have cut their spending more than lower-earners, which is a major contributor to the spike in unemployment.

Americans see a return to normal in a year or so. Sixty-six percent of respondents expect their spending to fully recover within 12 months, while 17% think it will take more than one year—and 5% say their spending will never return to pre-virus levels. Higher-income Americans see a quicker return to normal, with 74% seeing a full spending recovery in less than a year, compared with 59% for the lowest earners. Future analysis from the Yahoo Finance-Harris poll will reveal whether it’s happening.

By Melody Hahm | Yahoo Finance

Older Americans are putting overwhelming faith in news to inform their financial decisions as compared to the younger generation, according to the first installment of the new Yahoo Finance-Harris poll.

Eighty-one percent of people ages 55 years and older say their money and investment decisions are influenced by the coverage of current events. Only 25% of people between 18 and 34 years old use the news as an information source for their financial decisions.

The results stem from a poll of 2,033 respondents, conducted from June 15 to 17. Yahoo Finance has teamed up with Harris to produce monthly insights on consumer and workplace trends">

Fifty-five percent of U.S. adults get their news from social media, according to a 2019 Pew Research Report, up from 47% in 2018. And Facebook (FB) is the top destination among its peers, with 52% of all U.S. adults getting their news from the platform. Alphabet-owned YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL) comes in distant second with 28% of adults turning to the videos as a news source.

Social media as a news source

Unfortunately, disinformation travels the fastest and gets the most engagement on these social platforms. According to a 2018 MIT study, false news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than true stories, which take nearly six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of individuals.

In response to this reality, on June 17, a collective of six organizations launched #StopHateForProfit, an initiative that pressures companies to pull advertising from Facebook and Instagram for at least the month of July. “Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence,” the consortium states in its call to action.

Since then, consumer brands like Patagonia, REI, Unilever (ULVR.L), The North Face, Verizon (VZ), Coca-Cola (KO) and Starbucks (SBUX) have paused advertising for varying amounts of time.