CB Consumer Confidence

CB Consumer Confidence is the Consumer Confidence Index, a monthly programme called the Consumer Confidence Survey from The Conference Board. It began in 1967 as a mail survey every two months and has run monthly since June 1977. Since May 2021 it has run online through Toluna with 3000 responses per month, weighted to match population by region, age, gender and income.

It tracks perceptions and 6-month expectations for business, jobs and income, not spending, sales, inflation or labour levels, unlike Michigan sentiment or global confidence. Arabic outlets call it the Conference Board index for US consumer confidence, transliterated as Muashir Conference Board, and calendars list it as CB Consumer Confidence.

Responses flow in about 4 weekly waves during the reference month, closing about one week before release for the preliminary, or first, estimate. Responses arriving after the cutoff through month-end feed the final, or revised, estimate published with the next monthly release. Release comes at 10 AM ET on the last Tuesday of each month. Each release shows the three indexes with response shares, demographic detail, buying and vacation plans, inflation, rate, stock, family and recession expectations plus commentary.

Headline moves with its 5 survey questions on 6-month outlook, averaged equally into Present Situation and Expectations.

• Current business conditions: captures perceived current business environment, with good, bad or normal answers.
• Current employment conditions: captures perceived current labour market, with plentiful, not so plentiful or hard-to-get answers.
• Expected business conditions: captures near-term business outlook for 6 months ahead, with better, worse or same answers.
• Expected employment: captures near-term jobs outlook for 6 months ahead, with more, fewer or same answers.
• Expected family income: captures household income outlook for 6 months ahead, with increase, decrease or same answers.

The February 25, 2025 release put the index at 98.3, down 7.0 points from 104.1. It was the largest monthly drop since August 2021 and the third straight decline. Present Situation fell 3.4 points to 136.5 while Expectations dropped 9.3 points to 72.9, below 80 for the first time since June 2024. Only current business views improved slightly while jobs, future business, future jobs and income views weakened and 12-month inflation expectations rose from 5.2% to 6.0%.

The lesson is that high Present at 136.5 can coexist with recession warning at 72.9 as tariff talk hit a 2019 high.

1. Weight responses: weight answers to match population by region, age, gender and income, with extra online-panel factors for bias.
2. Seasonally adjust: adjust the 5 questions' response shares to remove regular seasonal patterns.
3. Relative value, or positive share of decisive answers: divide positive share by positive plus negative, ignoring neutral. For example 20.0% good and 16.0% bad gives 20.0 divided by 36.0 as 0.5556.
4. Benchmark to 1985, or base-year comparison: divide the relative by its 1985 average and multiply by 100. For example 0.5556 divided by 0.6000 times 100 gives 92.6.
5. Average indexes: average all 5 question indexes for headline, Q1 and Q2 for Present and Q3 through Q5 for Expectations. For example 92.6, 88.0, 75.0, 70.0 and 72.0 give Present 90.3, Expectations 72.3 and headline 79.5. Here 72.3 sits below 80, in recession-warning territory.