Consumer Confidence to Be Measured at State Level Rather Than Just National

Forget national consumer confidence figures for a moment. The Conference Board has just announced that when it releases its monthly Consumer Confidence Index you are no longer just going to see the national figure. The Conference Board is now going to be breaking out eight states individually as well.

The Conference Board will begin its new effort for eight U.S. states beginning with the March 21 release. Alongside the national and regional figures will be state-specific findings from the monthly Consumer Confidence Survey.

The new report may seem too narrow to matter, but this will highlight even closer the difference between where sentiment and confidence are rising or dropping. The eight lucky states are California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

With this report having so many more households, it is going to be one more noticed over the monthly Reuters/University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment readings released each month. The University of Michigan report is released on a preliminary basis and then given one revision at the end of each month. It is based on questions from only 500 households each month.

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