CCI grows 98.3 points in December

29 Dec '05

3 min read

Not-for-profit organization The Conference Board released Consumer Confidence Index (CCI) for December 2005.

The Consumer Confidence Index, which had rebounded in November, improved further in December. The Index now stands at 103.6 (1985=100), up from 98.3 in November. The Present Situation Index surged to 121.5 from 113.2. The Expectations Index increased to 91.6 from 88.4 last month.

The Consumer Confidence Survey is based on a representative sample of 5,000 US households. The monthly survey is conducted for The Conference Board by TNS. TNS is the world's largest custom research company. The cutoff date for December's preliminary results was December 20th.

"Consumer confidence continues to bounce back and is now at its highest level since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast," says Lynn Franco, Director of The Conference Board Consumer Research Center.

"The resiliency of the economy, recent declines in prices at the pump, and job growth have consumers feeling more confident at year-end than they felt at the start of 2005.”

“Even though all of the improvement over the past twelve months has been in consumers' assessment of current conditions, and expectations remain below earlier levels, consumers are confident that the economy will continue to expand in 2006."

Consumers' assessment of current-day conditions improved in December. Those claiming business conditions are "bad" decreased to 14.7 percent from 17.9 percent.Those claiming conditions are "good," however, decreased slightly to 24.3 percent from 25.6 percent. Job market conditions continued to improve. Consumers saying jobs are "hard to get" decreased to 22.2 percent from 23.6 percent, while those claiming jobs are "plentiful" edged up to 23.3 percent from 21.1 percent.

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