Consumer sentiment plunges for fourth consecutive month

Would it shock you to learn consumers are not exactly feeling great at the moment?

Consumer sentiment dipped 11% in April, marking the fourth consecutive month of declines, according to the University of Michigan’s latest consumer sentiment survey.

And when we say consumers aren’t feeling great, we mean everyone: Like the prior month, this month’s survey found that pessimistic outlook to be “pervasive and unanimous across age, income, education, geographic region, and political affiliation.”

Notably, interviews for the latest survey were conducted before the partial tariff reversal. Still, things have been bad for a while: Since December 2024, consumer sentiment has plunged over 30%.

“Consumers report multiple warning signs that raise the risk of recession: expectations for business conditions, personal finances, incomes, inflation, and labor markets all continued to deteriorate this month,” Joanne Hsu, the survey’s director, said in a statement.

In the next year, consumers expect inflation to climb 6.7%, “the highest reading since 1981” and a steep climb from 5% predicted the previous month. That also marks “four consecutive months of unusually large increases of 0.5 percentage points or more,” per Hsu. Consumers are also increasingly worried about unemployment; the number who expect it to climb in the year ahead grew to its highest reading since 2009.

“Consumers have spiraled from anxious to petrified,” Samuel Tombs, chief US economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said in a note.

Cool, cool, cool.