Data Analysis

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell 6.7 points to 81.9 in September 2026, the lowest reading in the series Momentum Research has compiled from the Conference Board's own releases since January 2024.

The Expectations Index fell 5.9 points to 63.6, its third consecutive monthly decline. August was revised down to 88.6 from the 89.4 the Conference Board first published.

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell 6.7 points to 81.9 in September 2026, down from 88.6 in August. The Present Situation Index fell 7.9 points to 109.3. The Expectations Index fell 5.9 points to 63.6, its third consecutive monthly decline. August's reading was itself revised down, to 88.6 from the 89.4 the Conference Board published on August 25. September's 81.9 is the lowest monthly value in the series Momentum Research has compiled from the Conference Board's own releases going back to January 2024.

The Conference Board released the September figures at 10 a.m. ET on September 29, 2026.

What did consumer confidence do in September 2026?

The headline index fell 6.7 points in a single month. That is a large move without being an unprecedented one. The compiled series holds 29 monthly readings since January 2024, and among the 26 consecutive-month comparisons inside it, five declines were steeper than September's. The steepest was 10.0 points between January and February 2024, and three separate months fell 7.2 points. What makes September different is not the size of the drop. It is where the drop landed.

The Conference Board's own summary sentence reads: "The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® fell by 6.7 points to 81.9 (1985=100) in September, down from 88.6 in August."

Dana M Peterson, Chief Economist at The Conference Board, put it this way in the release: "The Consumer Confidence Index deteriorated notably in September, following two prior months of softening." She added a detail that the headline number does not carry: "Consumer appraisals of current business conditions became negative for the first time since September 2024." That is the Conference Board's own comparison to a prior date, not the desk's.

Both component indices fell. The Present Situation Index, which the Conference Board describes as based on consumers' assessment of current business and labor market conditions, lost 7.9 points to land at 109.3. The Expectations Index, based on the short-term outlook for income, business and labor market conditions, lost 5.9 points to 63.6.

Those three numbers hold together. The Conference Board builds the headline index from 40 percent Present Situation and 60 percent Expectations, and 0.4 times 109.3 plus 0.6 times 63.6 comes to 81.88, which rounds to the published 81.9. That check is Momentum Research's own.

How far has the Expectations Index fallen?

September was the Expectations Index's third consecutive monthly decline, a run the Conference Board states in the release itself. At 63.6 it sits 45.7 points below the Present Situation Index.

That spread is the part worth sitting with. Consumers in this survey rated conditions today at 109.3 and conditions six months out at 63.6. The gap says the deterioration is about what people expect rather than what they are currently experiencing.

Is 81.9 the lowest reading on record?

No, and the honest answer takes a paragraph.

81.9 is the lowest of the 29 monthly readings Momentum Research has compiled from the Conference Board's own releases since January 2024. It is below the previous low in that series, April 2025 at 85.7.

The compiled series has four holes, because the Conference Board publishes each month's release in place and stopped keeping per-month archive pages after May 2025. Those holes are September, October and November 2025, and June 2026. Three of the four can be bounded from the Conference Board's own words: it described November 2025 as the second-lowest level of that year, which puts it above April's 85.7, and it described June 2026 as improved modestly, which puts it above the 90.2 recorded for July. October 2025 is implied at 94.6 by a Conference Board webcast page that never labels the figure as October, so the desk excludes it. September 2025 is genuinely unknown.

So the accurate claim is this. September 2026 is the lowest reading in the compiled series, and of the four missing months only one could in principle have been lower. The index goes back to 1967 and Momentum Research does not hold that history, so no all-time claim appears in this article.

What was happening during the survey period?

The Conference Board states the survey period for this month's preliminary results was September 1 to 23, and that the window "included a federal funds rate hike and ongoing geopolitical tensions." Those are the Conference Board's words for what the period contained. The release does not attribute the decline to either one, and this article does not either.

The word preliminary matters. The Conference Board publishes a preliminary reading and revises it, which is exactly what happened to August between the August 25 release and today.

The survey's write-in responses point the same way. Peterson said: "References to prices, the high cost of goods and services, and oil and gas prices in particular, rose to new heights, reflecting September's surge in fuel costs." On the other recurring theme she said: "Comments about war/conflict eased this month but remained elevated."

What does a national confidence survey mean for Florida housing?

Nothing mechanical. A confidence reading does not move a list price or a rate lock, and Momentum Research is not claiming a measured relationship between this index and Florida closings. No such relationship is calculated here.

The narrower point is this. The Expectations component covers the next six months, and the next six months is the window in which a buyer decides whether to start looking. It has now fallen three months running. That describes the mood of the national buyer pool in the weeks before contracts get written, which is worth knowing and is not the same thing as knowing what buyers did.

What Florida buyers actually did sits elsewhere, in closed sales, prices and inventory on the Florida housing tracker and on our market pages. Sellers in Miami and Tampa in particular should weigh this against their own local data, which in July ran in opposite directions between those two metros.

Limitations

Every figure here comes from the Conference Board's own consumer confidence page, read three times with different prompts, the second and third each after the previous read had expired from cache. All three returned identical values for the headline index, both components and both point changes, and the third pass asked only for quotations and confirmed each one word for word. The Conference Board publishes no wire release for this survey, so its own page is the only first-party surface, and no mirror or tracker was used.

The release does not state a threshold below which the Expectations Index signals anything in particular, so no such threshold appears in this article. An earlier extraction pass answered that 63.6 sits below 80, but that was arithmetic performed on the number rather than a sentence on the page, and the desk does not print it as a finding.

The historical series behind the chart was compiled by Momentum Research from Conference Board releases and podcast transcripts, one month at a time, and it is recorded in the desk's own ledger with a source for every value. It is not a Conference Board data product and it is not continuous. Four months carry no value because the Conference Board published none that could be tied to a specific month, and the chart breaks the line at each of them rather than drawing through. January 2026 was revised upward by 4.5 points, from 84.5 to 89.0, far outside the Conference Board's usual revision size and with no explanation published. Both figures are the Conference Board's own and both are internally consistent with its stated weighting. The chart flags that point.

The comparison of September's decline against five steeper ones is Momentum Research's arithmetic over the 26 consecutive-month transitions inside the compiled series, not a Conference Board statement, and it does not span the four gaps. The 45.7-point spread between the two components and the weighting check are also the desk's own arithmetic.

This is a national survey. It carries no Florida sample, no state breakdown and no housing-specific question that the release reports.

Sources

The Conference Board, US Consumer Confidence, September 2026 release, published September 29, 2026 at 10 a.m. ET.

The Conference Board, US Consumer Confidence, August 2026 release, published August 25, 2026, for the 89.4 figure as first printed.

Momentum Research, consumer confidence ledger compiled from Conference Board releases, January 2024 through September 2026.

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.