- Moderator
- #1
Trump is three months into his second term and he is already circling the drain. Consumer confidence has plummeted and so far his term has been nothing but daily chaos. All of this was predictable and the American people were warned about this.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment postings in March fell to their lowest level since September 2024.
“The three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” said Stephanie Guichard, the board’s senior economist for global indicator.
Guichard added that the confidence surveys overall were at “levels not seen since the onset of the Covid pandemic.”
Indeed, the level of respondents expecting employment to fall over the next six months hit 32.1%, “nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession,” Guichard added. That contraction lasted from December 2007 until June 2009. The level of respondents seeing jobs as “hard to get” rose to 16.6%, up half a percentage point from March, while those seeing jobs as “plentiful” fell to 31.7%, down from 33.6%.
Future income prospects also turned negative for the first time in five years.
The downbeat views extended to the stock market, with 48.5% expecting lower prices in the next 12 months, the worst reading since October 2011. Inflation expectations also surged, at 7% for the next year, the highest since November 2022.
Driving the pessimism was fear over tariffs, which reached an all-time high for the survey. Recession expectations hit a two-year high as well.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment postings in March fell to their lowest level since September 2024.
“The three expectation components — business conditions, employment prospects, and future income—all deteriorated sharply, reflecting pervasive pessimism about the future,” said Stephanie Guichard, the board’s senior economist for global indicator.
Guichard added that the confidence surveys overall were at “levels not seen since the onset of the Covid pandemic.”
Indeed, the level of respondents expecting employment to fall over the next six months hit 32.1%, “nearly as high as in April 2009, in the middle of the Great Recession,” Guichard added. That contraction lasted from December 2007 until June 2009. The level of respondents seeing jobs as “hard to get” rose to 16.6%, up half a percentage point from March, while those seeing jobs as “plentiful” fell to 31.7%, down from 33.6%.
Future income prospects also turned negative for the first time in five years.
The downbeat views extended to the stock market, with 48.5% expecting lower prices in the next 12 months, the worst reading since October 2011. Inflation expectations also surged, at 7% for the next year, the highest since November 2022.
Driving the pessimism was fear over tariffs, which reached an all-time high for the survey. Recession expectations hit a two-year high as well.
