Consumer confidence barely moved in August, and the two halves of the index moved hard in opposite directions underneath it
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The index went almost nowhere. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell 0.8 points in August, to 89.4 on a 1985 base of 100, from 90.2 in July.
Look underneath and nothing about the month was small.
The Present Situation Index, which measures what consumers make of business and labour market conditions right now, rose 6.8 points to 121.2, after three consecutive monthly declines. The Expectations Index, which measures what they think the next six months hold for income, business and jobs, fell 5.8 points to 68.2. One rose by more than eight times the headline change and the other fell by more than seven times it, and they very nearly cancelled.
The jobs split
The clearest version of the divergence is in the labour market questions, because consumers were asked about the present and the future in the same survey.
On the present, the labour market differential, which is the share of consumers saying jobs are plentiful minus the share saying they are hard to get, rose 4.8 points to plus 7.5 percent. The Conference Board attributes the move mainly to more people reporting that jobs are plentiful, with fewer saying they are hard to get.
On the future, the same respondents went the other way. Net expectations for the labour market fell 2.6 points to minus 11.5 percent. The share expecting more jobs to be available in six months fell from 16.4 percent to 14.6 percent, and the share expecting fewer rose from 25.3 percent to 26.1 percent.
Income expectations did the same thing in smaller type. Net expectations for household income fell 3.1 points but stayed positive at plus 3.8 percent, with 17.6 percent expecting their income to rise against 19.5 percent in July.
Consumer confidence moderated slightly in August for a second consecutive month. The Expectations Index slipped further into negative territory, which was offset by a moderate rise in the Present Situation Index.
That is Dana M Peterson, the Conference Board's chief economist, quoted in the release.
The July number has already moved
July was published on 28 July at 90.8. This release carries it at 90.2, a downward revision of 0.6 points.
That matters slightly more than a routine revision usually would, because of what the publisher said at the time. The July release recorded that mentions of war and conflict had eased during the July sample period, and warned in terms that those mentions could rise once the revised data came in. The August release now reports that write-in comments about war and conflict, food and groceries, trade and jobs all rose in August. The Conference Board draws no line between those two statements and neither does this item. The revision itself is what the full month produced.
The rest of the reading
Net views of current business conditions barely moved, up 0.1 of a point to plus 1.3 percent, while net expectations for business conditions fell 2.5 points to minus 6.3 percent. Expectations for interest rates softened a little: 61.3 percent still expect higher rates over the next twelve months, against 62 percent in July.
The survey is run for The Conference Board by Toluna and the results here are preliminary, with a cutoff of 16 August. The September reading is due on the last Tuesday of the month.
