Consumer confidence sank to its lowest point since 2014 as inflation fears and job worries hit households harder than Wall Street expected.
CNBC reported Tuesday that the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell to 81.9, a drop of 6.7 points and well below the Dow Jones forecast of 89.
The slide put the reading at its weakest level since 2014. Households pointed to rising prices and a softer jobs outlook as the main reasons for the gloom.
For the first time in the four-year history of one key survey question, more respondents said their personal finances were bad rather than good. That single shift captures the mood better than any talking point from Washington.
Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson said consumers turned sharply negative on current conditions.
Peterson stated:
"Consumer appraisals of current business conditions became negative for the first time since September 2024,"
She added that write-in answers painted a bleak picture.
"Consumers' write-in responses regarding factors affecting the economy were mostly pessimistic in September,"
And she tied the spike in anxiety directly to costs at the pump and the store:
"References to prices, the high cost of goods and services, and oil and gas prices in particular, rose to new heights, reflecting September's surge in fuel costs."
Average expected inflation climbed to 6.1 percent, up 0.3 point from August. The median expectation rose the same amount, to 5.1 percent. Those are not abstract figures. They are what families bake into next month’s grocery run and commute.
The Present Situation Index fell 7.9 points to 109.3. The Expectations Index slipped 5.9 points to 63.6. When people rate both today and tomorrow worse at the same time, spending caution follows.
The same day brought softer labor data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. August job openings fell to 7.08 million, down 256,000 and short of the Wall Street consensus of 7.2 million.
Declines hit professional and business services hard, along with healthcare-related openings. Hires edged higher. Quits barely moved. Layoffs fell slightly. The market is not collapsing. It is cooling in ways that ordinary workers notice first.
The Conference Board’s own jobs gauge tightened as well. The gap between people who say jobs are “plentiful” and those who say they are “hard to get” shrank 2.5 percentage points, to just 1.7 percent. That is a thin cushion for anyone looking for work or a raise.
A separate University of Michigan consumer survey pointed the same direction. Sentiment fell 7 percent in September to its second-lowest reading on record. Two major gauges, one message: households do not feel secure.
Respondents and markets also faced continued uncertainty over the Iran war. That backdrop helped push inflation expectations higher even as fuel costs already surged in September.
Financial markets added another layer of strain. Treasury yields and mortgage rates climbed, raising the cost of borrowing for homes, cars, and business investment at the same moment confidence cracked.
None of this arrived as a surprise to people living paycheck to paycheck. It arrived as confirmation. When the cost of goods, services, and gasoline keeps climbing, and when open jobs start to shrink, confidence does not need a press release to fall. It falls because families feel it.
Wall Street had priced in a far milder soft patch. The Conference Board number landed nearly seven points below the consensus call. That miss is the gap between model forecasts and the checkout line.
Working households do not set interest rates or wage war. They absorb the bill. This report shows more of them now rate their own finances as bad than good, a first for the question, and a warning that price pain and job jitters are no longer background noise.
Until prices ease and the job market steadies in ways people can feel, confidence will stay fragile, and voters will keep score on who treated inflation as someone else’s problem.