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<\/p>\n Email Link<\/p>\n \n American consumers are downbeat about the economy, according to preliminary results of a monthly survey conducted by the University of Michigan.\n <\/p>\n \n The index measuring consumer sentiment fell unexpectedly this month to 55.4 from 58.2 in August as inflation is on the rise and job prospects are worsening. September\u2019s reading also represents a 21% decline compared to a year ago, well before President Donald Trump took office and raised tariffs on practically everything the country imports.\n <\/p>\n \n In addition to inflation and the labor market, tariffs also remain a concern for consumers, Joanne Hsu, the survey\u2019s director, noted.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cTrade policy remains highly salient to consumers, with about 60% of consumers providing unprompted comments about tariffs during interviews,\u201d Hsu, said in a statement, noting that the same thing happened in the previous month.\n <\/p>\n \n Economists polled by FactSet had been anticipating a minor improvement in consumer sentiment from August. Despite sentiment that\u2019s near historic lows in a survey that goes back to the early 1950s, consumers are still feeling slightly better about the economy now compared to April and May during Trump\u2019s initial rollout of so-called \u201creciprocal\u201d tariffs, according to prior readings.\n <\/p>\n \n The survey also spotlights what appears to be an increasingly bifurcated economy between income classes, where higher-income Americans continue to spend relatively freely and are feeling more optimistic about the state of the economy, while lower and middle-income Americans are cutting back and are more worried.\n <\/p>\n \n While the economy is nowhere close to where it was in the 1970s and 1980s, when the nation\u2019s annual inflation rate and unemployment rate both hit double-digit levels, recent employment and inflation data have led to mounting concerns <\/a>of stagflation \u2013 when the economy slows significantly while inflation accelerates.\n <\/p>\n \n Consumer prices<\/a> rose 0.4% last month, bringing the annual inflation rate to 2.9%, according to Consumer Price Index data released Thursday. Meanwhile, there\u2019s a laundry list of recent data pointing to a weakening labor market.\n <\/p>\n \n For example, first-time applications for unemployment benefits surged last week to their highest level in four years. Also for the first time in four years<\/a>, there are more people looking for work than there are jobs available for them.\n <\/p>\n \n To top it off, the August employment report<\/a> showed employers hired just 22,000 new workers and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, the highest level since 2021. The labor force snapshot also revealed that the US economy lost 13,000 workers in June, marking the first month since 2020 when employers laid off more workers than they hired.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEconomic sentiment declined more than expected in September largely because Americans are fearful of losing their jobs,\u201d Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in a statement on Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n This string of data has essentially guaranteed the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates at its monetary policy meeting next week after having held rates steady for close to a year. Traders are also now betting on cuts at the subsequent two meetings this year, which has helped push stocks to record highs<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n This story has been updated with additional developments and context.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link American consumers are downbeat about the economy, according to preliminary results of a monthly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16890,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[72,61,60,123],"class_list":{"0":"post-16889","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-markets","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-markets"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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