Upstate consumer confidence recedes in June

Upstate consumers didn’t warm to the idea of making purchases in June, according to a monthly poll from the Siena (College) Research Institute (SRI) that showed them lowering their willingness to spend.

The overall consumer confidence index for upstate New York dropped 5.5 points to 69.2. The index’s current and future confidence components both contributed to the fall.

Current confidence slipped 4.1 points to 74.3. Future confidence dropped 6.4 points to 65.9.

All three Upstate confidence indicators came in below their break-even point of 75. The break-even point is the reading at which consumers are equally optimistic and pessimistic — index results above 75 demonstrate mostly optimistic consumers, while results below 75 mean consumers were largely pessimistic.

Even with the decreases, Upstate experienced its highest level of June consumer confidence in five years. The last time the region’s overall confidence index was this high in June was in 2007, when it measured 77.3.

“We’re not back to where we were in 2007,” says Douglas Lonnstrom, professor of statistics at Siena College and SRI founding director. “I thought [this] June was a strange month, looking at these figures. Every time we got a little bit of good news, we got a little bit of bad news. My basic overall view right now is the economy is going nowhere. We can’t seem to sustain anything.”

Upstate New York wasn’t the sole home of falling confidence this June. New York state as a whole and the nation also experienced decreasing willingness to spend.

Overall confidence dipped 2.1 points in New York to 74.5. Current confidence declined 2.7 points to 73.5, and future confidence eroded 1.7 points to 75.2.

Nationwide, overall confidence fell 6.1 points, resulting in an index of 73.2. Current confidence lost 5.7 points to 81.5, and future confidence slipped 6.5 points to 67.8. Those national indexes come from the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index.

SRI calculated New York’s June confidence indexes after randomly surveying 808 state residents over the age of 18 by telephone during the month. The survey does not reflect consumer reactions to last week’s Supreme Court decision on the national health-care reform law, according to Lonnstrom.

“We were still doing a little bit of polling when they ruled, but the significance of that would be minimal,” he says. “We’ll get that in July figures.”

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com