Falling Consumer Confidence

StumbleUpon 0 Like 0 Retweet 0

August 1, 2010

Photo by Robert Brook

The Conference Board of Canada has released the results of its consumer confidence survey conducted between July 8th and 18th. It shows that consumer confidence in the country fell for the second straight month! Confidence was down by 3.7 points to 80 points this month. Consumers seem to be especially unhappy about jobs and personal finances.

Just 20.7 percent of respondents predict the number of jobs in their community will increase in the second half of the year. From June, that means a 2.7 percent drop. On the contrary, the number of people expecting unemployment to rise went up by 1.7 percent. Nevertheless, the majority, 52.8 percent of those surveyed predict the employment situation to stay the same. It is quite interesting that people seem to be quite pessimistic about jobs, especially since about 93,500 new positions were created, in Canada, in June.

As a matter of fact, it’s not only consumers from Ontario and British Columbia who seem to be pessimistic now, as it has been over the last couple of months. At the moment it seems to be the general sentiment of the whole of Canada. Let's just hope the fears of consumers will not become a reality.