Confidence In National Economy Drops Going Into Jobs Day
Consumer confidence fell 0.8 points from 49.9 to 49.1 over the last two weeks, according to the HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI). This reading follows the strongest two-week period of the year where sentiment gained 1.1 points. Looking at recent economic data, this is the first release following the announcement of weak, 0.2 percentage growth through the first quarter of 2015. Looking ahead to jobs day on Friday, confidence in the labor market has been steadily declining since the beginning of the year.
Consumer confidence fell in four of the five components of the ESI over the past two weeks. While confidence in personal finances marked a minimal 0.1 point gain to 59.2, confidence in buying a new home, the state of the U.S. economy, and finding a new job fell by more than half a point. Confidence in the state of the U.S. economy saw the most significant drop of 1.4 points to end at 41.8, potentially reflecting the recent GDP reading discussed above.
The three-day moving average saw some volatility over the last two-week period, dropping 3.5 points to a low of 46.9 before finishing up at 48.8 points.
The next release of the ESI will be May 19.
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.
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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.
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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.