Consumer Confidence Dips Below 46 For The First Time Since March
Consumer confidence fell 0.6 points from 46.4 to 45.8 over the last two weeks, according to the latest data from the HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI). The ESI held above a reading of 46 since March and has not experienced a significant rise since a 1.4-point increase in early June.
The three-day rolling average reveals that consumer confidence reached a low of 44.8 on August 8 and 9, before rebounding sharply to 46.7 by August 12. This is 0.3 points lower than at the beginning of the two-week period.
Four out of five individual components decreased over the two-week period. In particular, dropping confidence in personal finances and purchasing a new home drove the overall index down. Consumer confidence in finding a new job increased 0.4 points to 36.6, doing little to offset the average 0.8-point drop in the remaining four components. The housing market remains the only component of the ESI in which consumers are less confident than they were at this time in 2013.
The next release of the ESI will be August 26.
About the Index
The HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (“ESI”) is a “living” index that measures U.S. adults’ expectations for the economy going forward, as well as their feelings about current conditions for major purchases. The primary goal of the Index is to accurately measure movements in overall national economic sentiment, and to provide a more sophisticated alternative to existing economic sentiment indices. Unlike other prominent indices that release consumer sentiment estimates infrequently, the HPS-CivicScience Index is updated in real time as responses are collected continuously every hour, every day. Large-scale cross-tabulation of survey responses and consumer attributes enable more granular analyses than are currently possible through prevailing measures.
For a more detailed overview of the Index and the underlying methodology, please request a white paper.
About Hamilton Place Strategies (HPS)
Hamilton Place Strategies is a policy, advocacy, and communications consulting firm with a focus and expertise at the intersection of government, business, and media.
For more information, visit Hamilton Place Strategies by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @HPSInsight.
About CivicScience
CivicScience, Inc. provides the leading intelligent polling and real-time consumer insights platform, the InsightStore™. Its proprietary platform powers the world’s opinions and quickly gets that data to the decision makers who care. Every day, CivicScience polls ask millions of people questions related to thousands of topics, while its powerful data science and big data technology analyzes current consumer opinions, discovers trends as they start, and accurately predicts future behaviors and market outcomes. CivicScience polls run on hundreds of premier websites, in addition to its own public polling site at www.civicscience.com. CivicScience’s InsightStore™ is used by leading enterprises in marketing research, advertising, media, financial services, and political polling. For more information, visit CivicScience by clicking here and follow them on Twitter – @CivicScience.