Consumer Confidence Slipped to 89.4 in August. The Part About Today Got Better and the Part About Tomorrow Got Worse.

by Tomas Ferreira · August 25, 2026

Markets Reporter, US Market Current

The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index fell 0.8 points in August to 89.4, from a revised 90.2 in July, the organization reported Tuesday morning. That is a small move on the headline. The two components underneath it moved in opposite directions, and by considerably more.

The Present Situation Index, which measures how consumers rate business and labor market conditions right now, printed at 121.2 in August, up 6.8 points from the revised July level. The Expectations Index, which covers the six-month outlook for income, business conditions and the job market, printed at 68.2, down 5.8 points. For reference, in the release The Conference Board published on July 28 the July readings as originally reported were 114.9 for the Present Situation Index and 74.7 for the Expectations Index; the August release compares against revised July levels rather than those first prints. Either way the August survey shows a stronger read on the present alongside a weaker read on the future, and the near-flat headline is the arithmetic result of those two forces working against each other.

Dana M. Peterson, chief economist at The Conference Board, described the split directly. "Consumer confidence moderated slightly in August for a second consecutive month," she said. "The Expectations Index slipped further into negative territory, which was offset by a moderate rise in the Present Situation Index after declining in the past three months."

The labor market questions account for much of the improvement in the current-conditions half. The share of respondents saying jobs were "plentiful" rose to 27.0% in August from 24.4% in July, and the share saying jobs were "hard to get" fell to 19.5% from 21.7%. That widens the gap between the two — a spread survey users often track as the labor differential — to 7.5 percentage points, an increase of 4.8 points on the month. On this measure, at least, August households described a labor market that had gotten easier, not harder.

Consumers' assessment of general business conditions today barely moved. The share calling conditions "good" ticked down to 18.9% from 19.1%, and the share calling them "bad" also eased, to 17.6% from 17.9%. Neither change is large, and the two offset each other in direction, which leaves the labor questions doing most of the work in the Present Situation Index.

The forward-looking questions are where the deterioration sits. The share of consumers expecting their incomes to increase over the next six months fell to 17.6% from 19.5%, while the share expecting incomes to decrease rose to 13.8% from 12.6%. On business conditions six months out, 16.8% expected improvement, down from 17.8%, and 23.1% expected worsening, up from 21.6%. In each pair the optimistic share fell and the pessimistic share rose — a cleaner signal than the headline suggests, because it shows up in both the income and the business-conditions questions rather than in one of them.

Two other details in the August survey bear on the policy debate. The Conference Board said consumers' average and median 12-month inflation expectations were slightly more elevated in August. And 61.3% of respondents said they anticipated higher interest rates over the coming 12 months, down from 62% in July. Consumer inflation expectations are not a forecast of inflation, and survey-based measures routinely run above realized outcomes, but they are one of the few monthly windows into how households are processing the price environment.

The write-in responses, where consumers volunteer what is on their minds without prompting, showed increased mentions in August of prices, oil and gas, war and conflict, food and groceries, trade and jobs. That is a broad list rather than a single dominant theme, which is consistent with a survey in which the headline number barely moved.

Timing matters for how much weight to put on the reading. The Conference Board gives Aug. 16 as the cutoff date for the preliminary August results, which places the responses before this week's run of events. A survey fielded through the middle of the month cannot capture what happened after it.

The data landed with equity markets already in a holding pattern. Monday's session ended mixed, with the S&P 500 closing at 7,652.86, down 21.51 points or 0.3%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at 53,417.16, up 140.15 points or 0.3%, the Nasdaq composite at 25,980.19, down 200.26 points or 0.8%, and the Russell 2000 at 2,995.08, down 22.79 points or 0.8%, according to the Associated Press tally distributed through Barchart. The AP report characterized the session as stocks drifting toward a mixed finish ahead of potentially market-moving events later in the week.

Those events are stacked in the back half of this week. Per Newsquawk's calendar for Aug. 24-28, Wednesday brings July personal consumption expenditures data, the second estimate of second-quarter GDP and July durable goods orders; the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium runs Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 27-29. For the confidence data specifically, the next test is whether the divergence in the August survey persists or closes: a Present Situation Index that keeps improving on the back of labor-market answers while the Expectations Index keeps falling is not a stable configuration for long.

The Conference Board has scheduled its next Consumer Confidence release for Tuesday, Sept. 29, at 10 a.m. Eastern time.