Even as consumer confidence has seen a marginal increase this month over the month before, worries about a coming recession persist, according to a just-released survey.
The Conference Board, which is based in New York, is a research group publishing any number of surveys measuring the outlook of both chief executive officers as well as consumers on current economic trends.
The group’s U.S. Consumer Index, established in 1967, surveys the attitudes of 5,000 households across the country, and is regarded by economists and business reporters as the leading measure at any given point of American consumer confidence.
In its latest survey, the Conference Board notes that its consumer confidence index reading at 117 is at the highest recorded level since the summer of 2021.
“Greater confidence was evident across all age groups, and among both consumers earning less than $50,000, and those making more than $100,000,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board, in a statement.
The index reading recorded a consistently upward reading from the depth of the Great Recession in 2009, all the way up to 2020 and the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. In the first quarter of 2020, the index then roughly dropped from a strong 130, to just over 80.
The latest figures are part of a generally upward trend that has been ongoing since the third quarter of last year.
In the new survey, just under 22% of consumer responses said business conditions were good, with 15.2% categorizing current conditions as bad. At the same time, just under 50% of respondents said jobs were plentiful, an increase of around 1% over June.
But while 17.1% of respondents said they expect business conditions to improve over the span of the next 6 months, the number of those who said they thought a recession was either “somewhat” or “very likely” by the summer of 2024 had increased to just under 71%. Last summer around this time, such recession expectations were voiced by around 66% of respondents.
Even so, noted Peterson, recession expectations remain below previous readings, “suggesting fears of a recession have eased relative to earlier this year.”
By Garry Boulard
