Consumer Confidence Index CCI

The Consumer Confidence Index is know as the CCI for short. It is a monthly release produced by The Conference Board since 1967. Figures are release in the last week of the month. Data released is for the same month as the release month. i.e. Data released in January is for January.

Three headline figures are released each month:

• Consumer Confidence Index
• Present Situation Index
• Expectations Index

The CCI is designed to assess the overall confidence, relative financial health and spending power of the US average consumer.

The CCI is based on the data from a monthly survey of 5000 US households. The data is calculated for the United States as a whole and for each of the country’s nine census regions. The survey consists of five questions on the following topics:

1. Current business conditions
2. Business conditions for the next six months
3. Current employment conditions
4. Employment conditions for the next six months
5. Total family income for the next six months

After all surveys are collected, each question’s positive responses are divided by the sum of its positive and negative responses. The resulting relative value is then used as an “index value” and compared against each respective monthly value for 1985.

The year 1985 was chosen as a benchmark year because it was a neutral year in the business cycle.

• The index values for all five questions are averaged together to produce the CCI.
• The average of index values for questions 1 and 3 form the Present Situation Index
• The average of index values for questions 2, 4 and 5 form the Expectations Index.