The Conference Board’s Confidence Index at 91.8, up from downwardly revised 91.0 in February, beating Bloomberg consensus of 88.

Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. Red dashed line at “Liberation Day” Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.

The moderate uptick is surprising given the rise in gasoline prices (survey Mar 6-24). However, the actual is within +/- 1 std error band.

Figure 2: Reported Conference Board Confidence (bold black), nowcast (light blue square), +/- 1 std error (light blue +), Bloomberg consensus (red square). Source: Conference Board, author’s calculations.

I find more interesting is the assessment of recession likelihood (up), and expected inflation (much more marked increase than in the Michigan survey).

Source: Conference Board, 3/31/2026.

The combined “already in one” and “very likely” response rate is about 37%, roughly the same as Ahmed’s estimate reported yesterday, in the range of WSJ.

Source: Conference Board, 3/31/2026.

The median expected inflation rate jumped by roughly three quarters a percentage point, a little more than the 0.4 ppts jump in mean U.Michigan expected inflation.