The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index Declines Again

At 10:00 a.m. ET, the Conference Board will release its latest reading on consumer confidence. Also, those expecting more “employment” fell to 11.6 from 14.4 in October and vs 15.5 a year ago and that is the weakest level since October 2011.

The Treasury market remains higher on the day, mostly due to increased geopolitical risks after Turkey downed a Russian military jet.

In a client preview, Barclays economists wrote, “The preliminary estimate of the University of MI survey showed a healthy increase in November, with broad-based support from current conditions and consumer expectations”.

Much of the drop can be attributed to downbeat responses to questions about the job market.

Consumer were also more pessimistic about the outlook for the labor market, as those anticipating more jobs in the months ahead fell to 11.6% from 14.4% and those anticipating fewer jobs rose to 18.7% from 16.6%. This is a sharp fall from an adjusted rate of 99.1 in October and marks the second consecutive month of declines for the index. Those who said jobs are plentiful decreased from 22.7 percent to 19.9 percent and those who said jobs are hard to get increased to 26.2 percent from 24.6 percent.

“November’s results could be sending a cautionary signal about the key economic variable of job growth”, said Joshua Shapiro, chief US economist at the consultancy MFR.

“Consumer confidence retreated in November, following a moderate decrease in October”, said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at the Conference Board.

The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey®, based on a probability-design random sample, is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and analytics around what consumers buy and watch. Those who expect their incomes to increase fell to 17.2 percent from 18.1 percent.

“I think the labor market continues to improve”.

Photo at top: Consumer confidence declined in November, which may be bad news for retailers during the holiday selling season.