Consumers Haven’t Been This Gloomy Since the Pandemic and the Great Recession

You’d have to go back to the last few seismic shocks to the U.S. economy — the pandemic and the Great Recession — to find this level of economic gloom among consumers.

As measured by the preliminary April reading of consumer sentiment released Friday (April 11) by the University of Michigan, worries over household finances, inflation and the impact of tariffs all weighed on our collective minds.  The 50.8 number tied to overall Consumer Sentiment comes close to the nadirs seen in the past decades, as seen in the accompanying chart.