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Two things spring to mind. The first is that many people feel like they haven't seen any benefit (or at least not seen their share of the benefit) in the times when "the economy" was apparently doing well, but have felt the pinch when "the economy" is doing badly. It's hardly surprising then that they don't really care if "the economy" will slump, because they feel like they're getting a kicking either way. There is a real argument about equality here, but somehow people were convinced that the EU was the source of their problems.
The second is that people are genuinely ignorant about the complexity of the supply chains that make their lives easy and cheap and the complexity of the legal/trade agreements that these operate within. They do not realise that the reason that they can buy cheap German lager, Spanish wine, French cheese, and Dutch vegetables is that the EU has done a vast amount of work thrashing out the agreements that make it possible. They simply don't believe that all those laws will actually cease to apply and that getting a new trade deal could take many many year. It's all just Project Fear after all.
ffm-
I fully agree, those are two big points. As much as it's stupid to just ignore the impact something will have on the economy, part of that is definitely due to how 'the economy' is being handled in media: it's all about big companies making profits we don't notice the impact of, stock values going up we don't profit from, big CEOs getting bonuses we could only dream of. It's not entirely surprising that people don't really buy the impact some changes to the economy will have on them, as much as they're being told that there will be one.
Though that ties in to what @JWestland said - why do these people show distrust when they're being told the economy has an impact on their everyday life, but they are receptive to the immigration 'crisis' being bigged up? Is it just because it's easier to sell physical people as the enemy, and possibly to feed into some latent and not-so-latent xenophobia?
SwissChap
I don't think you're wrong, clearly that is the case for a lot of people. But logically speaking, why is that so?
Considering that the quickest way of angering a large number of people in the UK is to raise the price of a Greggs sausage roll by 20p, or to raise parking charges, one would think that something potentially having a direct impact on the price of goods, and their salaries, would be extremely relatable. Whereas 'taking back control' - what even is that supposed to mean? 'Controlling our borders' - the UK doesn't even have a border like the southern US one where you have a large number of people trying to get through every day, so who exactly is feeling so directly impacted by this that the importance of the economy pales in comparison?
I think a possible answer to that is that to a lot of people, 'the economy' is a bunch of large companies that have been shown to do very well almost regardless of what is going on otherwise, and that don't pay taxes properly etc. Meaning that if you warn people about an impact on the economy, they might not really make the connection to themselves at all - and most (including myself) couldn't care less whether Starbucks makes a few million less in profits next year.