Utah consumers' confidence better than nationwide

Utah consumers maintained the status quo in March, with consumer sentiment essentially unchanged from February.

The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s Survey of Utah Consumer Sentiment, released last week, was 70.2 in March, down slightly from February’s 70.4. A similar survey by the University of Michigan found sentiment nationwide fell from February (67) to March (62).

“The relatively unchanged index from February to March reflects continued uncertainty among Utahns about the{mprestriction ids="1,3"} economy as they face mixed economic signals,” said Phil Dean, the institute’s chief economist. “Negative economic signals include higher interest rates and the banking crisis that began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March.

“Positive economic signals Utahns may notice include a strong local labor market and improvements in inflation. Overall, the positive and negative signals don’t appear to have influenced the sentiment of Utahns.”

The Utah survey uses key questions from the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers. Those questions measure residents’ views of the present economic situation and their expectations for the economy in the future. Data gathered from the key questions are used to create the consumer confidence index for Utah. Demographic questions are included in the questionnaire to allow for additional analysis of the data and to assess the representativeness of the sample.

Among the questions on the Utah survey, more people said they are better off financially than a year ago. The February amount was 33 percent, but it rose to 35 percent in March.

Optimism also rose when it came to whether people believed they would be better off financially a year from now. The “favorable” amount was 29 percent in February and 32 percent in March.

Regarding business conditions as a whole, respondents believing the next 12 months will have good times financially nationwide slipped from 24 percent in February to 18 percent in March. The figures expecting “unfavorable” conditions for the country grew from 66 percent to 72 percent.

Those surveyed generally have a more positive outlook for Utah than the nation as a whole. The number expecting business conditions in the state to be good over the next year was 39 percent in February but slipped to 37 percent in March.

The longer-range outlook, for the next five years, saw less-favorable times for the nation in March, slipping from 29 percent to 26 percent in March. The number expecting unfavorable times grew by 4 percentage points from February to March.

Nearly half (49 percent) of Utahns in February had a favorable outlook for the next five years but that shrunk to 42 percent in March. Meanwhile, the figure expecting unfavorable times grew from 40 percent in February to 49 percent in March.{/mprestriction}