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Managing uncertainty and change, and getting AI investments right were consistent themes throughout 2025 for corporate leaders. In our last poll of the year, our WSJLI Main Street Pulse Poll sought to get a better sense of how adult Americans were feeling about the U.S. economy and artificial intelligence, to check the pulse of respondents heading into the new year.
Here are some of the results: More of the respondents still feel more uneasy or uncertain about the U.S. economy, than confident.
Asked “what best describes how the current economic environment makes you feel” most respondents had a negative to neutral sentiment (Anxious? 23% Uncertain? 27% Uneasy but managing? 25%) versus a more positive sentiment (Calm? 10% Confident? 12%). About 4% said they were unsure.
In what may be of interest to some CFOs or other corporate leaders, most of the respondents said that employers hold a good deal of responsibility for workers to adapt to new technologies such as AI. Some 63% net respondents said employers were either “very” or “somewhat” responsible for helping workers adapt, versus a net 21% of respondents who said employers were “not very” or “not at all” responsible.
In what I found to be a bit of a surprise, 89% of respondents said that AI had no impact, minimal impact or some impact to their current job versus the previous year. (Some 46% said AI had “no impact” whatsoever.
What were the top concerns about AI? Here were the top three responses:
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🤖 AI replacing human skills or judgment (39%)
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😰 Job security and potential job loss (35%)
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👥 Reduced human interaction and collaboration (34%)
The WSJLI Main Street Pulse study was conducted Dec. 29–30, 2025, among an online sample of 1,003 U.S. adults 18 and older, by TrueDot.ai, the AI-accelerated research platform. Respondents were sourced from opt-in online panels.
For more forecasting for the week and year ahead, read on below…
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