Consumer Sentiment: PRELIMINARY Results for JANUARY 2026

The University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) - PRELIMINARY Results for January, 2026 was released today:

Predicted: 52.0

• Actual: 54.0

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• Change from Previous Month: +2.08% (+1.1 points)
  
  

• Change from 12-Months Previous: -24.69% (-17.7 points)

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• Final ICS Reading for December, 2025: 52.9
  
  
• Final ICS Reading for January, 2025: 71.7

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From Today's Report:

"...Consumer sentiment inched up for the second straight month and reached its highest reading since September 2025. Improvements in January were seen among lower-income consumers, while sentiment fell for those with higher incomes.

All told, while consumers perceived some modest improvement in the economy over the past two months, their sentiment remains nearly 25% below last January’s reading.

They continue to be focused primarily on kitchen table issues, like high prices and softening labor markets.

Although consumers’ worries about tariffs appear to be gradually receding, they remain guarded about the overall strength of business conditions and labor markets.

Note that more than 90% of interviews for this release were collected prior to the capture of Maduro in Venezuela.

Year-ahead inflation expectations held steady in January at 4.2%. This is the lowest reading since January 2025 but remains well above that month’s 3.3%.

Long-run inflation expectations ticked up slightly from 3.2% in December to 3.4% this month. In comparison, readings ranged between 2.8 and 3.2% in 2024, and were below 2.8% throughout 2019 and 2020..."

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CHART: Over The Past Year, College-Educated Consumers
Report Higher Likelihood of Own Job
 Loss than Less-Educated Counterparts

JANUARY 2026 UPDATE

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The ICS is derived from the following five survey questions:

1. "We are interested in how people are getting along financially these days. Would you say that you (and your family living there) are better off or worse off financially than you were a year ago?"
   
   
2. "Now looking ahead, do you think that a year from now you (and your family living there) will be better off financially, or worse off, or just about the same as now?"
   
   
3. "Now turning to business conditions in the country as a whole, do you think that during the next twelve months we'll have good times financially, or bad times, or what?"
   
   
4. "Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely: that in the country as a whole we'll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?"
   
   
5. "About the big things people buy for their homes, such as furniture, a refrigerator, stove, television, and things like that. Generally speaking, do you think now is a good or bad time for people to buy major household items?"
   

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• Click here for more on how the ICS is calculated.

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The ICS uses a 1966 baseline, i.e. for 1966, the ICS = 100. So any number that is below the 1966 baseline of 100 means that the folks who were polled recently aren't as optimistic about the U.S. economy as those polled back in 1966.

The ICS is similar to the Consumer Confidence Index in that they both measure consumer attitudes and offer valuable insight into consumer spending.

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The "predicted" figure is what economists were expecting, while the "actual" is the true or real figure.

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• Click here to view the full University of Michigan report.

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