The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index retreated this month to 107.2 points (1985=100) after advancing in February to 111.2 points, the highest since August 2001, the business research organization said today.
The index lagged the 108.5-point median forecast from a Bloomberg News survey of 67 economists. The CCI is based on a monthly survey of 5,000 households, conducted by custom research firm TNS.
“Apprehension about the short-term future has suddenly cast a cloud over consumers’ confidence,” Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in today’s report. “Despite diminishing expectations, consumers’ assessment of present-day conditions remains steady and does not suggest a weakening in economic conditions.
“The recent turmoil in financial markets, coupled with the run-up in gasoline prices, may have contributed to [the] heightened sense of uncertainty and concern. The direction of both components over the next few months bears watching to determine whether this decline is just a bump in the road or something more substantial.”
But Rudy Narvas, a senior economist at 4Cast Inc. in New York, told Bloomberg that consumers have “reasonable income growth. I don’t think we should be too concerned about the consumer.”
The share of respondents saying current conditions are “good” dipped to 28.3 percent from last month’s 28.7 percent, while those saying conditions are “bad” was steady at 14.9 percent. The outlook on labor conditions was mixed, with a 5.5-year high of 30.5 percent saying jobs are “plentiful,” compared with last month’s 27.8 percent, but 19.1 percent saying jobs are “hard to get,” compared with last month’s 17.9 percent.
Additional information is available at www.conference-board.org.
