Consumer sentiment improves slightly amid near-record lows
The plunge in Canadian consumer confidence over the past couple of months seems to have come to a halt for now, with sentiment levels stabilizing for a third straight week.
The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index ticked up slightly last week, its first gain since early February. The gauge remains near all-time lows after plummeting as millions of Canadians lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The results suggest income support programs have helped put a floor under consumer confidence amid economy-wide shutdowns. As of April 28, Canada’s government had paid $25.6 billion to 7.3 million workers under its main emergency benefit program.
The government also began taking in applications for its wage subsidy program last week, which will be the most expensive component of its fiscal package.
“After a wholesale collapse in consumer confidence ... in the wake of the COVID -19 outbreak, the negative trajectory may be flattening in the short term,” Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research, said in a statement.
Every week, Nanos Research surveys 250 Canadians for their views on personal finances, job security and their outlook for the economy and real estate prices.
Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 telephone responses.
The composite gauge rose to 37.7 last week, from 37.1 a week earlier. It’s still about 20 points below its average over the past year.
There was little change in the results for most of the questions:
The share of Canadians who say their personal finances have worsened over the past year fell to 41.2 per cent from 42.3 per cent, which was a record high. The number of Canadians who believe the nation’s economy will weaken over the next six months recorded its second weekly decline — to 76.1 per cent from 80.2 per cent two weeks ago. Concern about losing a job dropped slightly to 23.8 per cent from 24.5 per cent.