The Conference Board said consumer confidence rose to 91.7 in October

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index rose 7.5 points to 91.7 in October, from 84.2 in September. The release, updated Tuesday, says September was a slight upward revision and that the index uses 1985 as 100. The Present Situation Index, based on views of current business and labor-market conditions, rose 8.6 points to 120.4. The Expectations Index, based on the short-term outlook for income, business and jobs, rose 6.9 points to 72.6, which the board said only partly reversed three monthly declines. The preliminary survey covered Oct. 1 through Oct. 21. A correction on the release says 21.4% of consumers called business conditions “good,” up from 18.8% in September. An earlier version had said “down.”

Fergus McCormick, senior economist for global indicators at the board, said confidence advanced mainly because views of current and expected business conditions improved, and that the recovery lined up with retail gasoline prices easing from September to October. He said that, even with the October increase, confidence was still on the longer downward trend of the past few years, and that consumers planned to spend less on services and durable goods over the next six months. He tied that to higher prices and inflation. He also said write-in answers still showed frustration with costs, that references to prices, food and groceries, and oil and diesel rose, that comments about war and conflict eased for a second month but stayed elevated, and that mentions of jobs as a concern ticked up by less. Those are his descriptions of the survey. They are not a forecast from this article.

The board said the gap between consumers calling business conditions good and those calling them bad widened by 4.8 percentage points, to a net 3.6%. It said 17.8% called conditions bad, down from 20.0%. On jobs, 26.7% said work was plentiful, up from 24.3%, and 21.4% said jobs were hard to get, unchanged. The labor-market differential, plentiful minus hard to get, improved by 2.4 points to plus 5.3%. Looking six months ahead, 17.7% expected business conditions to improve, up from 16.5%, and 20.7% expected them to worsen, down from 25.2%. The net for business expectations rose 5.7 points to minus 3.0%. The net for the job outlook rose 1.8 points to minus 11.1%: 15.2% expected more jobs, and 26.3% expected fewer. On income, 18.7% expected an increase, up from 18.1%, and 12.0% expected a decline, down from 14.9%. The net for household income rose 3.5 points to plus 6.7%.

Average 12-month inflation expectations fell but were still 5.8%, the board said. Consumers still expected higher interest rates over the next 12 months, and more of them expected stock prices to rise than to fall. On a six-month moving average, plans to buy cars and homes both dipped, and planned spending on electronics pulled back by more than 1 point. Expected spending on most services was lower. The share planning a vacation in the next six months was 43.3%, down 0.9 point from a revised 44.2% in September. The board said that, on a six-month average, only consumers under 35 and those with household income of $100,000 or more showed an increase in confidence, and that October’s improvement ran across political affiliations and was larger among Republicans. The cutoff for the preliminary results was Oct. 21. Toluna conducts the online survey for the board. The index is a survey result. It is not a prediction of spending, and it is not advice about what a household should buy.