Consumer confidence inched up in June due to improved views of business conditions and recent declines in oil prices easing inflation fears. However, the consumers’ view of the labor market continued to weaken, despite recent strong job reports; The share of respondents saying jobs are ‘hard to get’ reached a five-and-a-half-year high. The labor market differential, which measures the gap between consumers viewing jobs as plentiful and hard-to-get, remained narrow and reached its lowest level since February 2021. Overall, consumer confidence remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

The Consumer Confidence Index, reported by the Conference Board, is a survey measuring how optimistic or pessimistic consumers feel about their financial situation. This index rose from 90.6 to 91.2 in June. The Consumer Confidence Index consists of two components: how consumers feel about their present situation and their expected situation. In June, the Present Situation Index decreased 3.0 points to 116.4, the lowest level since February 2021; the Expectation Situation Index increased 3.0 points  to 74.4, the highest level this year. This is the seventeenth consecutive month for which the Expectation Index has been below 80, a threshold that often signals a recession within a year.

Consumers’ assessment of current business conditions improved in June. The share of respondents rating business conditions as “good” increased by 0.8 percentage points to 20.0%, while those claiming business conditions as “bad” fell by 0.2 percentage points to 16.5%. Meanwhile, consumers’ assessments of the labor market were mixed in June. The share of respondents reporting that jobs were “plentiful” rose by 0.1 percentage points to 24.9%; meanwhile, those who saw jobs as “hard to get” increased by 2.7 percentage points to 22.5%, the highest level since January 2021.

Consumers were more optimistic about the short-term outlook. The share of respondents expecting business conditions to improve rose from 18.8% to 19.0%, while those expecting business conditions to deteriorate decreased from 23.2% to 20.3%. However, expectations of employment over the next six months were unchanged. The share of respondents expecting “more jobs” fell from 16.6% to 15.2%, and those anticipating “fewer jobs” declined by 1.4 percentage points to 25.6%.

The Conference Board also reported the share of respondents planning to buy a home within six months. The share of respondents planning to buy a home rose slightly to 6.6% in June. Of those, the shares planning to buy a newly constructed home and an existing home were unchanged at 0.7% and 3.0%, respectively. The remaining 2.9% were planning to buy a home but were undecided between new or existing homes.