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Tuesday, July 29, 2025

US consumer confidence rises to five-year high

by

20130528

WASH­ING­TON–Amer­i­cans' con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my jumped in May to a five-year high, lift­ed by a bet­ter out­look for hir­ing, ris­ing home prices and more op­ti­mism about busi­ness con­di­tions. The in­crease sug­gests con­sumers may keep boost­ing eco­nom­ic growth this year.The Con­fer­ence Board, a New York-based pri­vate re­search group, said Tues­day that its con­sumer con­fi­dence in­dex rose in May to 76.2. That's up from a read­ing of 69.0 in April and the high­est since Feb­ru­ary 2008.

The jump in con­fi­dence fol­lowed a sep­a­rate re­port that showed the hous­ing re­cov­ery is strength­en­ing.Home prices jumped 10.9 per cent in March com­pared with a year ago, the most since April 2006, ac­cord­ing to the Stan­dard & Poor's/Case Shiller 20-city in­dex. All 20 cities showed year-over-year gains.

The re­ports con­tributed to a strong day on Wall Street. The Dow Jones in­dus­tri­al av­er­age surged more than 177 points in ear­ly morn­ing trad­ing. Broad­er in­dex­es al­so jumped.Con­sumers' con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my is watched close­ly be­cause their spend­ing ac­counts for about 70 per cent of US eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

AP


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