May Michigan Sentiment downwardly revised from preliminary, to a record low.
Figure 1: U.Michigan Economic Sentiment (blue), Conference Board Confidence Index (brown), Gallup Confidence (green), all demeaned and divided by standard deviation 2021M01-2025m02. Red dashed line at “Liberation Day” Source: UMichigan, Gallup, Conference Board, and author’s calculations.
The final Sentiment reading was revised down to 44.8 from preliminary 48.2. Expectations were revised down even more — from 48.5 to 44.1, suggesting consumers’ outlook dimmed further as the month proceeded.
It is interesting that the Gallup measure of confidence closely mirrors that of Michigan sentiment over the Trump 2.0 period, bolstering evidence that there is a true marked downturn in overall economic attitudes. The Conference Board’s Confidence Index comes out next Tuesday.
The decline in expectations was broad-based across partisan groupings.
Figure 2: Consumer expectations (bold black), Democratic/lean Democratic expectations (blue), Republican/lean Republican (red). Source: U.Michigan.
As the Judy Hsu, Director of the Consumer Survey, notes overall sentiment and expectations align with that of independents, so we can see all three groupings exhibit declines in expectations since January 2025.
Addendum:
An interesting picture regarding how independents view long term inflation (that is they are more skeptical of anchored expectations…):
Source: Hsu (2026).
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