Gary Thayer
Gary Thayer
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Fewer people are worried about jobs right now, more people think that jobs are easy to get, and I think that's supporting confidence despite the high energy prices.
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Confidence is up again -- to the highest level in over two years. Consumers are feeling better not only about current conditions, but also about prospects for the future.
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It looks like the economy is stabilizing after the hurricane-related stresses and we're heading into the holidays with an upturn in confidence that is encouraging and bodes well for the good consumer spending over the next month or so.
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It shows that consumers are feeling poorly about the economy, similar to what we've see in other recessions. Confidence is not as low as it was in the recessions of the early 1990s and early 1980s, but it is dropping in response to the worsening employment situation and the concern about the terrorism threat.
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The upturn in confidence is an encouraging sign that economic conditions are stabilizing after the hurricanes. Lower energy prices are helping, but the upturn in employment is also a plus.
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Historically, when we see confidence decline, we have to watch and see if it shows up also affecting spending. We'll be watching closely to see ... whether the decline in confidence is more of a psychological factor or a real factor affecting spending.
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Overall, confidence is still at a healthy level, up from where it was a year ago, but we did pull back a bit from the three-year high that we saw in June.
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The rise in the employment component, combined with the drop in new jobless claims reported earlier today, suggests that employment conditions remain good at the start of the year.
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Energy prices are dropping, and consumer spending is holding up despite rising unemployment . These are encouraging things the market is recognizing.
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There's still a lot more inflation fear than there is inflation. There is still concern that the economy could generate inflation at some point but it still doesn't seem to be doing that. The Fed doesn't need to act more aggressively, but it doesn't mean that they won't.
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Productivity numbers on a quarter-to-quarter basis are very volatile. The downwardly revised second-quarter numbers could easily be revised upward in the third quarter.
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We did see a big recovery in (producer) prices, but that was primarily in energy. Core prices increased only modestly and that's good news for the Fed.
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We had seen the daily and weekly sentiment surveys show a small dip in consumer attitudes at the end of January. Some of that could have been related to the late January rise in energy prices.
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We got good news on inflation. People anticipate that with inflation still very low, the Fed will stay on hold for awhile.