preliminary report earlier this month<\/a> but still at the lowest level ever on records that go back to 1952.<\/p>\n\u201cAfter the two-week ceasefire was announced and gas prices softened a touch, sentiment recovered a modest portion of its early-month losses,\u201d Joanne Hsu, director of the university\u2019s Surveys of Consumers, wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Middle East conflict has roiled the global economy and left Americans grappling with sharply higher gas prices, a pickup in inflation and growing uncertainty about their finances.<\/p>\n
Current personal finances worsened by 9% in April, and about half of consumers surveyed spontaneously mentioned that high prices were eroding their standards of living, Hsu noted.<\/p>\n
Consumers\u2019 year-ahead inflation expectations shot higher this month, rising to 4.7% from 3.8% in March. It was the largest one-month jump since April 2025, a month when President Donald Trump announced a sweeping set of steep tariffs on many nations.<\/p>\n
The war and its economic fallout comes at a time when Americans were already navigating high costs of living from a post-pandemic inflation spike and years of prices climbing much faster than has been typical.<\/p>\n
Sentiment is hovering just below levels seen in June 2022, when inflation hit a four-decade high.<\/p>\n
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"People shop at a grocery store in Manhattan on February 27, 2026 in New York City. – Spencer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629028,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,5938,164,35153,55595,5935,2425,304853,253113],"class_list":["post-629027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-consumer-sentiment","tag-economy","tag-gas-prices","tag-inflation-expectations","tag-joanne-hsu","tag-president-donald-trump","tag-slight-improvement","tag-war-with-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/92a5861a92a50b114405e86309f08b5a.jpeg\")
People shop at a grocery store in Manhattan on February 27, 2026 in New York City. – Spencer Platt\/Getty Images <\/p>\n