Confident? Sure, we're confident. Don't we look confident?
Mixed picture in Conference Board’s December consumer confidence readings. Upshot is that folks aren’t feeling good about their current predicament, but remain hopeful that things will get better.
Gauge of present economic conditions fell to its lowest reading since February 1983, but expectations for the next six months reached highest level in two years.
That optimism doesn’t exactly square with their sentiment on the labor market; percentage who think jobs are hard to get dipped a bit — to 48.6% from 49.2% in November, but so did the percentage who think jobs are plentiful — to 2.9% from 3.1%.
“Yes there was an improvement in consumer confidence but the fact that it is entirely due to improvement in the expectations reading is not exactly the most encouraging way to achieve the better reading,” Miller Tabak strategist Dan Greenhaus said.
“The lack of improvement in the labor differential reading though is perhaps the most worrisome indicator on record these days,” he said. ”We remain nervous about the prospects for labor improvement and while jobs will almost assuredly be added, we don’t yet see signs that enough jobs will be added.”
Greenhaus also noted that the number of respondents who believe their incomes will increase fell, while those planning to buy a car or a house in the next six months also fell.
“In fact, those planning to buy a home fell to a new cycle low.”
