00:00Essentially, consumers have been seeing a pretty downward trend for the last few months,
00:05particularly since gas prices have started picking up again.
00:09They're just feeling like there's no relief on the horizon for cost of living,
00:13for gas prices in particular, and they're feeling quite frustrated about that.
00:18One-year business conditions really plunged.
00:20One-year personal expectations, personal finances expectations also fell quite a bit as well,
00:25and inflation expectations up.
00:27This really is about inflation and cost of living.
00:30It's really about inflation, but in the past we've seen a big divide
00:33between how Republicans feel and how Democrats feel.
00:35What does the latest survey reveal about how folks feel across political divisions?
00:42The decline that we saw in September was seen across political lines.
00:46We saw a pretty decent drop among both Republicans as well as Democrats.
00:51And in fact, since February of this year, before the Iran conflict,
00:55Republicans are now down 28% on their sentiment.
00:58So they really feel like things have deteriorated since the beginning of the year.
01:02Inflation outlook, one year, 4.6%.
01:06That's kind of steady with what was last period, but that is not what the Federal Reserve wants to see
01:12here.
01:12So, I mean, how much is that inflation outlook impacted by gasoline and diesel and that kind of stuff?
01:18The short-run inflation expectations, that's at 4.6% right now.
01:22That is definitely highly influenced by gas prices and fuel prices in general.
01:28And in fact, we had an uptick in the share of consumers mentioning gas prices, fuel prices,
01:33during the interviews this month.
01:34So it's definitely weighing on them.
01:36And when we look at gas price expectations, folks across the board are expecting gas prices to go up both
01:43in the short run and the long run.
01:44So they're not really seeing any relief on this front anytime soon.
01:48In terms of responses, what surprised you the most about this latest survey?
01:53I mean, did anyone write anything in that kind of gave you something new to think about in terms of
01:57drivers?
01:59I think one of the things that surprised me is not very many people are talking about the election.
02:04They're really focused on economic factors.
02:06So we've seen an uptick in comments about tariffs.
02:10That's really coming back onto the consciences of consumers when it had been waning a bit over the last year.
02:18We have a lot of consumers talking about gas prices.
02:22AI mentions are fairly flat around, I believe, around 10% of consumers.
02:27So it's not really something that consumers are necessarily connecting heavily to the economy,
02:33though 10% is still a lot compared to the basically zero we were seeing a year and a half
02:37ago.
02:37That's a good point.
02:38It's interesting that you're not really hearing a lot about the midterm elections.
02:41Is that typical given this time of year?
02:44I mean, we're now in late September.
02:46And if anyone's going to talk about the elections, it would be now.
02:50You know, I think that consumers are really focused on a few major things.
02:56One is the ongoing Iran conflict in gas prices, and the other is tariffs.
03:01And I think both of those things, you know, may or may not be affected a whole lot by the
03:06midterm elections.
03:07So I think in that sense, it doesn't shock me.
03:09In other election years, you might have other factors that are really the major influences on consumers.
03:17But at this point, they're really pointing at those two things as the major factors.
03:23Joanne, we've got inflation headwinds for sure.
03:26But on the flip side, everybody who's got a job out there, probably whoever wants a job probably has a
03:32job now.
03:33So how does the employment environment impact kind of expectations?
03:37The thing is that while unemployment is relatively low right now, a lot of consumers do expect it to rise
03:44in the year ahead.
03:45So they don't feel super stable on that.
03:47At the same time, when consumers are thinking about the personal financial situation, it's not just the reliability of their
03:55incomes.
03:56It's about their purchasing power, their real income.
03:58And invariably, consumers believe that that their incomes are going to be eroded by inflation in the year ahead.
04:06So they are, you know, they're looking at what they.
