Hard Luck for Confidence

June 9, 2009 — -- Consumer confidence is flat this week, grinding out what's so far been its worst year in nearly a generation of weekly ABC News polls.

ABC's Consumer Comfort Index, based on Americans' ratings of current economic conditions, stands at a dreadful -47 on its scale of +100 to -100, almost exactly matching its 2009 average and within sight of its record low -54 in late January.

Click here for PDF with charts and data table.

The index had eked out a gain to -42 in April and early May, but then fell back in the face of rising gasoline prices. Compare its level now to its long-term average, -12, much less its high, +38 in the long-lost go-go days of January 2000.

Factors include not just gas – up 58 cents since late April to $2.62 a gallon – but also unemployment, now 9.4 percent, up half a point this month to the highest since 1983.

INDEX – Measures of views that the worst may be over have been brighter, boosted largely by hopes held by supporters of President Obama. But the CCI is based on the harder reality of current assessments of the buying climate, the national economy and personal finances. And these are not good:

-Only 8 percent rate the economy positively, in single digits for 33 of the last 35 weeks and 30 points below the long-term average.

-Twenty-seven percent say it's a good time to buy things, up 5 points since mid-April to the most since March 2008. But it's still just 9 points above the all-time low in October and August, and 10 points below the long-term average.

-Forty-five percent rate their personal finances positively, typically the best of the three measures. That's down 7 points in the past month – the steepest such decline since May 2008 – to just 4 points from the record low in January, and 12 points below average.

TREND –Since mid-April the CCI has been stuck in a 7-point range from -42 on May 10, the year's best, to last week's -49. The only glimmer is that it's been above -50 for eight weeks straight, its best such run since August.