Consumer sentiment took another hit in March as concerns over inflation and a sluggish stock market grew.
Investigation released Mid-month reading 57.9down 10.5% from February, below the Dow Jones consensus estimate of 63.2. The reading was below 27.1% a year ago, the lowest since November 2022.
While the current conditional index fell 3.3%, the measure of expectations for the future is 15.3%, compared with 30% in the same period in 2024.
Additionally, with President Donald Trump’s tariffs on U.S. trading partners, fears of leading inflation.
The outlook for the year soared to 4.9%, 0.6 percentage points from February and the highest reading since November 2022. On the five-year horizon, the outlook jumped to 3.9%, up 0.4 percentage points from its highest level since February 1993.
While investigations are often prone to differences between parties, investigative officials say nearly all demographic sentiments collapse on cross-party lines.
“Many consumers see high uncertainty in policy and other economic factors; the frequent circumference of economic policies makes it difficult for consumers to plan for the future regardless of their policy preferences,” said Joanna HSU, director of investigation. “All three political affiliations consumers agree that the outlook has weakened since February.”
Ho added that Republican expectations fell by 10%, Democrats 24%, and independents expectations fell by 12%. Overall sentiment has fallen by 22% since December.
