Consumer attitudes about both the present and near future dimmed again in April, as tariffs dented sentiment and confidence in employment hit levels last seen around the global financial crisis.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 86 on the month, down 7.9 points from its prior reading and below the Dow Jones estimate for 87.7. It was the lowest reading in nearly five years.
However, the view of conditions further out deteriorated even more.
The board’s expectations index, which measures how respondents look at the next six months, tumbled to 54.4, a decline of 12.5 points and the lowest reading since October 2011. Board officials said the reading is consistent with a recession.
“The three expectation components—business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” said Stephanie Guichard, the board’s senior economist for global indicator.
Guichard added that the confidence surveys overall were at “levels not seen since the onset of the Covid pandemic.”
Indeed, the level of respondents expecting employment to fall over the next six months hit 32.1%, “nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession,” Guichard added. That contraction lasted from December 2007 until June 2009. The level of respondents seeing jobs as “hard to get” rose to 16.6%, up half a percentage point from March, while those seeing jobs as “plentiful” fell to 31.7%, down from 33.6%.
Future income prospects also turned negative for the first time in five years.
The downbeat views extended to the stock market, with 48.5% expecting lower prices in the next 12 months, the worst reading since October 2011. Inflation expectations also surged, at 7% for the next year, the highest since November 2022.
Driving the pessimism was fear over tariffs, which reached an all-time high for the survey. Recession expectations hit a two-year high as well.
In related data Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment postings in March fell to their lowest level since September 2024. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed 7.19 million positions, down from 7.48 million in February and below the Wall Street expectation of 7.5 million.
Government postings fell by 59,000 amid President Donald Trump‘s efforts to pare down the federal workforce. Transportation, warehousing and utilities also saw a drop of 59,000.
The JOLTS survey showed hiring was little changed while layoffs fell by 222,000.
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