U.S. Consumer Confidence Improves Much More Than Expected In November

(RTTNews) - In welcome news for retailers going into the holiday shopping season, the Conference Board released a report on Tuesday showing a much bigger than expected jump in U.S. consumer confidence in the month of November.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index surged up to 107.1 in October from an upwardly revised 100.8 in October.

Economists had been expecting the index to climb to 101.0 from the 98.6 originally reported for the previous month.

With the bigger than expected increase, the consumer confidence index reached its highest level since hitting 111.9 in July of 2007.

"Consumer confidence improved in November after a moderate decline in October, and is once again at pre-recession levels," said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at the Conference Board.

She added, "While the majority of consumers were surveyed before the presidential election, it appears from the small sample of post-election responses that consumers' optimism was not impacted by the outcome."

The bigger than expected increase by the consumer confidence index was partly due to a more favorable assessment of current conditions, with the present situation index jumping to 130.3 in November from 123.1 in October.

Consumers saying business conditions are "good" improved to 29.2 percent from 26.5 percent, while those saying business conditions are "bad" fell to 14.8 percent from 17.3 percent.

The appraisal of the labor market was moderately more positive, as the percentage of consumers saying jobs are "plentiful" rose to 26.9 percent from 25.3 percent and the percentage saying jobs are "hard to get" was unchanged at 21.7 percent.

Consumers were also more optimistic about the short-term outlook, driving the expectations up to 91.7 in November from 86.0 in October.

While the percentage of consumers expecting business conditions to improve over the next six months dipped to 15.3 percent from 16.4 percent, those expecting conditions to worsen also edged down to 10.0 percent from 11.8 percent.

The Conference Board said the outlook for the labor market was also somewhat mixed, as consumers expecting more jobs in the months ahead was virtually unchanged at 14.5 percent but those anticipating fewer jobs fell to 13.8 percent from 16.6 percent.