U.S. Consumer Sentiment Fell in August, Conference Board Says
The research group said its consumer confidence index fell to 89.4 from 90.2 in July as expectations for future business and labor market conditions became more pessimistic.
U.S. consumer confidence declined in August, hitting its lowest level in seven months, according to the Conference Board. The Consumer Confidence Index fell to 89.4, the lowest since January, from a downwardly revised 90.2 in July. Economists polled by Reuters had expected the index to be 90.2, as opposed to the revised 90.8 in July.
The decline was primarily driven by a 7.8% drop in the expectations index. Despite a slight improvement in consumers' views of the current situation after four months, their outlooks for both the business environment and the labor market over the next six months turned more pessimistic, as reported by Dana Peterson, the Conference Board's chief economist.
The jobs differential index, which gauges the gap between respondents who expect jobs to be plentiful versus those who believe they are hard to find, rose for the first time in three months, indicating an improvement from July's lowest reading in over five years. However, consumer expectations for inflation over the next 12 months rose to 5.8% from 5.6% in July.
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