Consumer confidence regains about half its losses from the fall peak.
But that’s still lower than“It's good, but we're not back to where we were on average over the past few years,” she said. The Conference Board is a nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank and business membership organization that has been measuring consumer confidence for decades.
To put the current 97.2 index reading in context, the index was above 100 for almost four years running before the pandemic. The index got as high as 137.9 in the last decade, before cratering early in the pandemic.The consumer confidence index reading plunged to 85.7 in April, while consumers' expectations for the future hit a 13-year low, as President Donald Trump announced a slew of country-specific “liberation day” reciprocal tariffs in early April. Those tariffs were paused a week later for 90 days so the administration could negotiate more favorable trade deals with other countries. But Trump maintained a 10% baseline tariff on most countries, with higher tariffs on China, Canada, Mexico and on some products. Trump extended the suspension of higher reciprocal tariffs past the original deadline in July to the first of August.the European Union, Japan, the U.K., Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. Guichard said Americans aren’t as concerned about tariffs now, with many feeling the worst possible outcome for inflation may have been avoided.“I think they are really in the wait-and-see mode,” Guichard said. “What we see from our write-in responses is that they are very concerned about the potential impact of tariffs and especially on inflation.”Passage of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” didn’t really register with people, Guichard said.Year-ahead inflation expectations reached 7% in The Conference Board’s April survey. That was the highest level since November 2022., as measured by the consumer price index, sits at 2.7%.that Trump uses tariffs to accomplish multiple goals, from revenue generation to the reshoring of manufacturing. “But it does come at a near-term cost of higher prices for U.S. businesses and U.S. consumers, because this notion or the idea that foreigners will pay the tariff has obviously been thrown out the window now,” Knightley said. “I think no one really believed it, and consumers certainly didn't believe it."has also found that tariffs are the top concernThe Conference Board also said Tuesday that Americans’ appraisal of current job availability weakened for the seventh consecutive month, reaching its lowest level since March 2021.“But this is something we are watching closely, because it's been deteriorating slowly but steadily,” she said.That’s not really showing up in the unemployment rate. But the job market feels stagnated.Companies are not laying off people. At the same time, they may have hit the pause on hiring.The monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, or , released Tuesday showed 7.4 million job openings, 5.2 million hires, and 5.1 million total separations in June.American employees continued to enjoy near-record-high job security, with the firing rate in April at just 1%.“Job openings and hiring both eased in June, consistent with the cooling we’ve been seeing in the labor market,”Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said via email of the new JOLTS. "Neither layoffs nor hiring seem to possess much positive momentum. Amid much uncertainty and volatility, many employers don’t want to get caught with too much headcount. They’re also reticent to engage in mass layoffs.”
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