Markets
Consumer Confidence Fell for a Second Straight Month as Layoff Headlines Pile Up
A closely watched confidence gauge slipped again this month, with the labor-market component of the survey driving nearly all of the decline.
A widely tracked consumer confidence index fell for a second consecutive month, extending a decline that's now moved the gauge to its lowest reading since the spring.
The drop wasn't broad-based — respondents' views on current conditions actually held roughly steady, while the forward-looking expectations component, specifically the questions about job availability over the next six months, did essentially all of the damage. That distinction matters, because expectations components have historically been a more reliable leading indicator of actual consumer spending pullbacks than the present-conditions half of the same survey.
The timing lines up with a genuine uptick in layoff announcements across a handful of sectors over the past several weeks, which is the more likely direct cause here rather than any single macro data point — consumers, it turns out, respond more to headlines about people losing jobs around them than to most other economic indicators combined.