---
title: "Mixed Business Climate"
description: "Roughly as many Americans have a favorable (47%) as unfavorable (45%) opinion of business corporations, a low in 20-plus years of Pew Research polling."
date: "2011-03-02"
authors:
  - name: "Pew Research Center"
url: "https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2011/03/02/mixed-business-climate/"
---

# Mixed Business Climate

The public’s views of business corporations are substantially less positive than they were in January 2007. Currently, nearly as many Americans have an unfavorable opinion (45%) of business corporations as have a positive view (47%). This level of favorability is a low in a quarter-century of Pew Research polling. Business favorability is down 10 points from early 2007, when 57% of the public had a favorable view of business.Opinion of business has fallen sharply among Republicans and political independents. While a 58%-majority of Republicans still have a positive view of business corporations, in 2007 fully 70% had a positive opinion.Independents have also expressed a double-digit decline in favorable views of business, and are now less positive in their views of business corporations (41% favorable) than are Democrats (47% favorable), who registered a relatively small decline in favorability toward business. [Read More](https://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1897/favorability-labor-unions-salary-american-worker-productivity-public-sector)