It’s not a double-dip recession, but it certainly doesn’t feel like the fourth year of a strong recovery.
In fact, most seem to be viewing the economy as downright “stagnant,” which doesn’t bode well for holiday shopping spending.
That’s the assessment Matthew Towson, a spokesman for the monthly Discover US Spending Monitor, offered of its latest poll. It found that in September overall consumer intentions to spend more dropped 2 percentage points, to 26 percent of respondents.
And the number of those saying they would spend more on household items dropped some 5 percentage points, to 33 percent.
Consumers rating the economy as good or excellent remained at just 17 percent.
“Last month was really a sort of blah month,” Towson summarized.
In general, middle-income respondents, those making between $40,000 and $75,000 a year, were a little more optimistic, but those with incomes above $75,000 were a little more pessimistic than they were in August, the poll found.
Only 33 percent of men overall rated their finances as good or excellent. That is a drop of 3 points from August. Women who rated their finances as good or excellent remained at 32 percent.
Towson said that today’s consumer confidence numbers, were “not the lowest, but close to the lowest” in the history of the poll, which began in 2007.
The Discover US Spending Monitor samples about 8,200 people over 30 days.
The survey conducts 275 interviews per night.