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Economy in Brief
Charts of the Week (Sep 23, 2022)
Against a backdrop this week of enduring geopolitical tensions as well as the Fed's latest decision to lift interest rates...
Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index Indicates Sluggish Factory Activity in September
The Kansas City Fed reported that its manufacturing sector business activity index fell to 1 in September...
U.S. Current Account Deficit Narrowed in Q2'22
The U.S. current account deficit narrowed to $251.1 billion during Q2'22...
U.S. Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims Rise
Initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to 213,000 (-43.9% y/y)...
FOMC Increases Funds Rate, Raises Inflation Outlook & Lowers GDP Projections
The Fed announced a 75 basis point increase in the target for the Federal funds rate...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
by Tom Moeller April 26, 2022
• Present situation & expectations are little changed m/m.
• Expectations for employment deteriorates.
• Expectations for inflation dip.
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index during April weakened 0.3% (-8.7% y/y) to 107.3 from 107.6, revised from 107.2. A reading of 107.5 had been expected in the Action Economics Forecast Survey.
The Present Situation Index fell 0.8% this month (+15.7% y/y) to 152.6 after rising 7.6% in March to 153.8. The Consumer Expectations index improved 0.7% in April (-28.5% y/y) to 77.2, following three straight months of sharp decline.
The jobs gap, representing the difference between respondents indicating that jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get, slipped to a 44.6% from the record 47.1% in March. Calculated by Haver Analytics, this series has had a 69% correlation with the unemployment rate over the last ten years. The jobs plentiful measure fell this month to 55.2% from the record 56.7% in March. The jobs hard-to-get measure rose to 10.6% of respondents.
Current business conditions were perceived as good by an increased 20.8% of respondents in April. Expectations that business conditions would improve in six months fell to 18.1% of respondents, down from 42.5% in April 2020. More jobs were expected in six months by a lessened 17.4% of respondents, half the percentage twelve months ago. The percentage expecting rising income improved to 16.5% of respondents.
The expected inflation rate in twelve months slipped to 7.5% from 7.9% in March. It remained up from a 4.4% low in January of 2020. Roughly two-thirds of respondents expected that interest rates would rise over the next twelve months, the most in three years. The share of respondents planning to buy a home within six months held fairly steady m/m at 5.9% and remained below a June 2020 high of 6.8%. Those planning to buy a major appliance rose sharply m/m to 49.8% of respondents, but remained below 53.9% registered in July 2021.
The Consumer Confidence data are available in Haver's CBDB database. The total indexes, which are indexed to 1985=100, appear in USECON, and market expectations are in AS1REPNA.
