The two primary monthly gauges of American consumers’ economic mood posted mixed results in April, as anxiety over the war in Iran continued to weigh on household spending.
The Conference Board said on Tuesday that its Consumer Confidence Index slightly improved this month, climbing 0.6 points to 92.8. The March reading was also revised higher, to 92.2 from the previously reported 91.8. A reading above 100 generally indicates consumer optimism, while a reading below 100 suggests pessimism.
“Consumer confidence edged up in April but was overall little changed, despite material concern about rising gasoline prices as the war in the Middle East prompted a surge in Brent crude oil prices,” Dana Peterson, The Conference Board’s chief economist, said in a statement.
The group’s Expectations Index, which measures consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business conditions, and the labor market, rose 1.2 points to 72.2. But it still remained below 80, a level the Conference Board said usually signals a recession ahead.
The Conference Board compiles its index from surveys conducted between April 1 and April 22 among a sample of 3,000 households. In April, consumers’ write-in responses showed more frequent mentions of prices, oil and gas, and war than in March, which the group said likely reflected concerns about how the Middle East conflict could affect household budgets.
A separate long-running consumer survey from the University of Michigan, released on Monday, painted a grimmer picture.
The university’s Consumer Sentiment Index, based on about 1,000 web-based interviews between March 24 and April 20, fell to 49.8 in April, down from 53.3 in March. That was below the previous low of 50 recorded in June 2022, and marked the weakest reading in the UMich survey’s more than 50-year history.
Consumers across age, income, and political groups reported lower sentiment in April, according to the university. However, the survey noted that sentiment improved somewhat after a two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran was announced in mid-April and gas prices eased slightly.
“The Iran conflict appears to be passing through to consumer views primarily through effects on prices, particularly gas and energy prices stemming from disruptions to shipping,” Joanne Hsu, a UMich economist and director of the surveys, said in a statement.
“At this time, consumers do not foresee relief from high prices in the near future. In fact, consumers expect them to worsen before they improve,” she said.
The latest readings come as the national average price for a gallon of gas rose to $4.18 this week, according to the American Automobile Association, up more than $1 since before the United States and Israel began their joint strikes on Iran in late February. The last time U.S. drivers were paying more than $4 per gallon was in 2022, in the months after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated into a full-scale war.
Inflation has also picked up. The consumer prices index rose by 3.3 percent in March from a year earlier, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported earlier this month, up from 2.4 percent in February and the largest annual increase since May 2024.
Gasoline was the No. 1 contributor to the index’s spike, rising by 21.2 percent, the biggest monthly increase since the agency first published these data in 1967.
