Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index: jobs views and futures

What the index measures

The survey asks about current business and employment conditions and expectations for the next six months for business conditions, employment and income. The Present Situation index and the Expectations index combine into the headline, indexed to 1985.

Compared with the University of Michigan survey, the Conference Board questions give more weight to the labor market and less to personal finances and buying conditions. The two surveys can therefore diverge in the same month without either being wrong.

The labor differential

Respondents say whether jobs are plentiful, not so plentiful or hard to get. The difference between the share saying plentiful and the share saying hard to get, often called the labor differential, tends to move with the unemployment rate in the opposite direction. It arrives before the jobs report for the same month, so a sharp change can shift labor-market expectations ahead of the official data.

Why futures react

• Index futures: confidence is read as a hint about spending, but its month-to-month link to actual consumption is loose; reactions are usually modest.
• Treasury futures: a shift in the labor differential or in inflation expectations reported by the survey can nudge the expected policy path.
• The weight of the release depends on the week: it matters more when there is little other data and less in a week already shaped by inflation or jobs figures.
• A revision to the prior month can offset the current surprise.

Order flow at 10:00 a.m. on a Tuesday

The release comes inside the first hour of the regular session. In most months the pre-release thinning of the book is minor, and the footprint shows a bar with more volume than its neighbours but no sweep through many levels. When the index or the labor differential surprises strongly, the first bar can break the opening range, and the next bars decide whether it becomes a trend or a failed break.

Other 10:00 ET data can share the minute, such as JOLTS or housing figures in some months. When they do, the footprint cannot say which one the market reacted to, and the calendar is the only way to know what printed together.

In Senzoukria

In the News calendar, rows whose name contains consumer confidence are described as “Consumer mood — leads spending.” If only high-impact rows are shown, enable Medium in the Impact filter. The event detail shows the time in Chicago, which is 9:00 a.m. year-round since both US zones change clocks on the same dates.

The Opening Range indicator marks the high and low of the first minutes of the regular session, frozen and projected to the right, so a 10:00 ET break of that range is easy to see on the footprint.