American consumer confidence fell sharply in September, the Conference Board reported on Tuesday, September 29, 2026, with its headline index dropping to 81.9 from a revised 88.6 in August — the weakest reading since 2014.
The 6.7-point decline was far worse than economists had expected. Forecasts compiled ahead of the release pointed to a reading near 89, according to Yahoo Finance.
The two halves of the index
Both components fell, and the more striking move was in the half that measures how people see the economy right now.
The Present Situation Index, built from views of current business and labor conditions, dropped 7.9 points to 109.3. "Consumer appraisals of current business conditions became negative for the first time since September 2024," said Dana M. Peterson, the Conference Board's chief economist.
The Expectations Index, covering the outlook six months ahead, fell 5.9 points to 63.6. The Conference Board has long treated readings below 80 on that gauge as a recession signal, and it has now sat under that line for some time.
The labor-market differential — the share of respondents saying jobs are "plentiful" minus the share saying they are "hard to get" — narrowed by 2.5 percentage points, to 1.7. That is close to the point where the two answers cancel out entirely.
Prices dominate the write-in answers
Consumers were also more pessimistic about prices. Average expectations for inflation over the next 12 months rose 0.3 points to 6.1%, with a median of 5.1%.
"References to prices, the high cost of goods and services, and oil and gas prices in particular, rose to new heights," Peterson said, describing the open-ended comments respondents write in. Gasoline has been a visible part of that: Yahoo Finance reported a national average of $4.45 a gallon against $3.13 a year earlier, a consequence of the disruption to Middle East supply.
The survey's cutoff date was September 23, which means the responses were collected in the days around the Federal Reserve's September 16 decision to raise the federal funds rate to a range of 3.75% to 4%.
What it measures, and what it does not
Confidence surveys are statements of mood, not of spending, and the two have diverged before — households have kept buying through gloomy readings more than once since 2021. What makes this release harder to wave away is which half moved most. Expectations sour easily; assessments of conditions people can see in front of them, the present-situation half, are slower to turn, and that is the component that fell furthest here.
Peterson said consumers expect business conditions and the labor market to weaken further in the months ahead, while still anticipating that their own household incomes will grow.
Reporting from the Conference Board and Yahoo Finance.
