Americans' confidence in big business is low: Gallup

Washington, May 28 (IANS) A majority of Americans say large US companies do a poor job in helping the US economy, with 43 percent saying the companies are weak in creating jobs for Americans, Gallup found in a poll released Tuesday.

The poll comes amid a still flagging US economy in terms of jobs growth, with continuing high US unemployment nationwide, except in areas such as Washington D.C., where the local economy remains strong, Xinhua reported.

Americans see large US companies as having a more positive effect overseas than they do domestically, with 66 percent of Americans believing that large US companies create jobs for citizens in countries outside the US, Gallup found.

Americans in general have a less-than-stellar image of big business, with a mere 22 percent in previous Gallup polls saying they have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in big business -- one of the lowest confidence ratings of any of the institutions Gallup has tested.

Americans do seem to recognise that large US companies contribute in some areas, and are most positive about large companies' ability to create important new products and technologies, Gallup said.

Clearly the public is sceptical of the benefits provided by America's large companies for their home country -- even while conceding that these organisations create new products and technologies and help the countries overseas where they operate.

In sharp contrast, previous Gallup polls show that 65 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in small business.

Even though Americans rate large US companies positively overall for their creation of new products, they get much less credit on this dimension when compared with small businesses, Gallup found.

One major challenge for large US companies is to convince Americans that they help the US economy as much as they do economies overseas.

Demonstrating their economic contribution domestically compared with small businesses is another challenge.