Quarterly Report: Increasing Consumer Confidence Continues In Q2

According to the Q2 2014 HPS-CivicScience Economic Sentiment Index (ESI), the quarterly measure of the ESI continues to rise after a strong 2014 first quarter. The ESI two-week rolling average shows that consumer confidence has been marked by stability, holding above its end of July level a year ago. The quarterly report examines confidence by income, region, occupation, age, and more.

View the full report here.

Key findings include:

• The quarterly measure of the ESI rose in the second quarter of 2014, but remains below its level from a year ago. At the end of July, the two-week average was slightly above levels a year before. At this point last year, consumer confidence began to fall and then plummeted around the government shutdown before rising back to previous levels.

• Consumer confidence rose across all income groups except those making between $25-$35K. While those making $25-$35k fell, they also experienced the highest increase in Q1’14, suggesting the fall might simply be a reversion to the mean.

• While younger people remain the most confident, those between 35-65 years old saw the largest gains in Q2’14. Unlike in Q1’14, young people saw little gains in confidence. Meanwhile, those between 35 and 65 years old saw strong gains in Q2’14.

• With the largest gains since Q2’13, people on the West Coast remain the most economically confident among people in all regions. However, regional trends show consistent gains across the country.

• Rural residents still lag in confidence. Meanwhile, confidence of those living in the suburbs fell year-over-year.

• Improvements in confidence have been uniform across education levels. Those with educations of high school level or less saw the largest increase in confidence, from 40 to 42.

• Virtually all occupations saw an increase in confidence in Q2’14 except for operations and sales. Homemakers saw the largest increase in confidence, from 43 to 46.

• Unlike the employed, confidence among unemployed have not reached levels from a year ago. Confidence among the unemployed rose 3 points in Q2’14, up to 39 from 36 in Q1’14. For the employed, confidence rose 2 points from 47 to 49 during the same period.

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.