Preliminary at 46.3 < 47.5 Bloomberg consensus with expectations above consensus, and current conditions below. Here’s a picture of indicators, using the Cummings-Tedeschi adjusted U.Michigan series (all series standardized):
Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment, using Cummings Tedeschi adjustment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. Red dashed line at “Liberation Day”, purple dashed line at US-Iran war. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, Cummings and Tedeschi (2024), and author’s calculations.
Notice that if one does not adjust the U.Mich. series, the picture looks a bit worse.
Figure21: 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”, purple dashed line at US-Iran war. Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.
Employment is near all-time high; unemployment rate is steady, inflation is moderate. All the reasons to be pessimistic. Perhaps because people anticipate the Democrats retaking Congress? Or just the media constantly parroting the refrain that things a so bad?
Maybe because people have been going out to purchase food and gas – or trying to get a mortgage. Most people don’t go cherry-pick a good-looking number from national statistics to figure out how they are doing personally.
“The U.S. core inflation rate (which excludes volatile food and fuel costs) eased to 2.4% in August 2026 from 2.5% in July 2026. It was also the lowest since March 2021”
— Trading Economics
Mortgage rates still lower than 2023.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/mortgage30us
Gasoline prices lower than Biden peak.
https://gasprices.aaa.com
But people are influence by media to believe they are really struggling.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DSPIC96
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
bruce, let’s be clear, those peaks during the Biden administration were the result of having to clean up from the clusterf*@k that occurred during the trump administration. remember the disaster trump oversaw with the pandemic? yeah, you know the one, where he failed to respond adequately in any capacity as dear leader. somebody had to clean up the mess. the inflation that trump is dealing with now is his own clusterf*@k. he is unable to pass this mess on to another president this time around. but he does not do janitorial duties.
just curious bruce, would you be whining if your cola for ss and retirement were paused this year? because if inflation is not an issue, you should not really need that cola going forward. my guess you would be howling if you did not get your cola.
It seems they can fool you all of the time. The people going to the gas pump and comparing Trumps promise of gasoline under $2 per gallon are not fooled. Nor are they distracted bye the fact that the Covid price peak was worse.
Apparently you are one of those people who can be a fool all of the time, Bruce. “The U.S. core inflation rate, which is relevant only to people who don’t eat, don’t travel, and don’t use gas or electricity in their homes, eased to 2.4%”. So your response to people who do eat, travel, and use gas or electricity in their homes is “you are a fool for caring about those costs”, or words to that effect? Mortgage rates are at the highest they’ve been since 1999, with the exception of a few weeks in 2023 – so the fact that we are at the 99.7th(+) percentile of mortgage rates over the last 27 or so years means mortgage rates really aren’t an issue and anyone who thinks they are, a potential homebuyer for instance, is a fool? And from the very website you link to on gasoline prices: “WASHINGTON, DC (October 1, 2026) – The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline dropped nearly 7 cents from last week to $4.41. This follows a record-setting September at the pump. The monthly average was $4.33, 50 cents higher than the previous September record.”
Jesus, Bruce, I knew you were a Trump apologist, but this is pretty desperate, even for you.
5 million people just lost their SNAP benefits, and 8 million have lost health care insurance. Employment is increasing in health care and services, decreasing in every other sector of the economy, and has been for some time. My best friend, who is a professor at a business school, says that he and his professor buddies agree that the last couple of years have been the worst job market for undergrad and grad students any of them have ever seen – and that dates back to before the tech crash. My daughter, who graduated magna cum laude from an excellent school in 2025, is now on her second piece of what used to be called gig work, which ends next March, and had to move some 2000 miles away for that. Real wages have fallen 0.3% over the last 12 months. Interest rates are higher than they’ve been since 2000. The economy has been propped up by two things: baby boomers needing health care and massive data center construction, the latter of which won’t last much longer. Then what happens?