Consumer comfort in U.S. brightens on year-end shopping moods

WASHINGTON – Consumer confidence climbed last week to a more than two-month high as holiday-happy Americans registered their most upbeat assessments of the buying climate since April.

The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to 43.6 in the week ended Dec. 27 from 42.2 the prior period. All three components, which also include attitudes about the national economy and personal finances, improved, boosting the year’s final full-week reading above the 2015 average of 42.9.

The measure of whether respondents viewed now as a good time to shop increased to 40.6, the highest since the week ended April 26, from 38.6 in the prior period.

“This rapid improvement aligns with a strong early estimate of holiday shopping sales,” Gary Langer, president of the New York-based Langer Research Associates LLC, which conducts the survey for Bloomberg, said in a statement. At the same time, the broader index is ending the year less than a point higher than where it closed out 2014, “reflective of a year without any strong direction,” he said.

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The average for all of 2015 is still 1.9 points short of the 2007 mean, indicating sentiment has room to reach its pre-recession norm.

A gauge of Americans’ views on the national economy jumped to 34.5 last week from 33. The index measuring attitudes toward personal finances rose to 55.6 from 55.

Respondents who were 55 to 64 years old were the most optimistic since mid-February, while the youngest group, ages 18 to 34, showed the highest reading since the start of April. Sentiment also increased in every employment group, with full-time workers at their brightest in more than eight months.

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