Decline In Consumer Confidence Slows
The decline in the HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI) slowed after three consecutive drops, falling only 0.3 points from 49.9 to 49.6. In total, economic sentiment has dropped 3.1 points from the start of the year. Even with this sharp decline at the start of the year, the ESI remains well above last year’s average. The most recent drop follows a similar pattern over the same period last year in which we saw a steep decline at the beginning of the year that then leveled off and saw a strong gain at the end of March.
Looking across the five components of the index, three dipped while confidence in the U.S. economy and confidence in buying a new home both saw gains over the past two weeks. Confidence in the U.S. economy rose from 44 to 44.4 while confidence in buying a new home rose 0.3 points to 56.3.
Conversely, consumer confidence continued to fall in the prospects of a new job, personal finances, and making a major purchase. Confidence in finding a new job dropped the greatest from 40.9 to 40 despite the unemployment rate dropping from 5.7 to 5.5 with 295,000 jobs added in February.
The three-day moving average continued to see high volatility, jumping up to 50.6 before dropping to 48.3 and swinging up and ending at 50.9.
The next release of the ESI will be March 24.
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.