The Conference Board’s September survey shows consumer confidence at 81.9, with the steepest drop among households earning $125,000 to $150,000. The pressure is no longer confined to people who were already struggling.
Consumer confidence fell 6.7 points to 81.9 in September, according to the Conference Board, and the decline did not stay where economic stress usually shows up first. Confidence weakened across every age group and nearly every income level, but the sharpest drop came among households earning $125,000 to $149,999. Those are households most people would describe as comfortable: two incomes, a mortgage, a car payment, maybe childcare, and a sense until recently that the math worked. When that group loses confidence faster than anyone else, it means the pressure has moved up the income ladder. It also means it is landing on the people whose spending carries the consumer economy.
What Changed
The Conference Board’s Expectations Index, which tracks how consumers see income, business conditions and jobs six months from now, fell 5.9 points to 63.6, its third consecutive monthly decline and far below the level of 80 the Conference Board has long tied to rising recession risk. The share of consumers saying jobs are “hard to get” rose to 21.9% from 20.3% in August, while the share saying jobs are “plentiful” slipped to 23.6%, leaving the two nearly even. Labor market expectations fell to –14.4% and business expectations to –9.5%. Household income expectations stayed slightly positive at +2.5%, so people still expect their own paychecks to hold. What they are losing faith in is the jobs and companies those paychecks depend on. That matches what SSC has reported: a labor market that isn’t collapsing but is becoming harder to enter, nearly 19,000 layoffs already scheduled that have not yet reached the data, and 451,000 women who have left the labor force this year while the number of men has barely moved.
Why the Middle of the Ladder Feels It
Consumers told the Conference Board they expect prices to rise 6.1% over the next year, up 0.3 points from August. For a household at $135,000, that expectation runs into fixed costs that don’t flex: a mortgage locked at today’s rates, a car loan, tuition, daycare. SSC’s reporting found that even as inflation came in better than expected, borrowing money is still getting more expensive, and households that finance large parts of their lives feel that most. They earn too much for most forms of relief and carry too much debt to absorb a shock easily. A layoff notice, a rate reset or a smaller bonus can change their year quickly, which is why their confidence can fall faster than their income does. Gen Z and millennials remained the most confident generations in the survey, which may say less about their finances than about how many of them have not yet taken on that kind of debt.
What to Watch
Confidence surveys measure mood, not spending, and households often keep spending for months after their outlook darkens. What usually comes first is quieter: a delayed renovation, a canceled trip, a job search that starts before anyone is let go. Heading into the holiday season, the signal to watch is whether that caution reaches the households earning six figures in what they actually spend, not just in what they tell surveyors. If it does, the slowdown will show up in places that have looked insulated so far. The October survey will show whether September was a dip or the start of a trend in the households the economy has relied on most.