According to the latest from the Deloitte Consumer Tracker, consumer confidence has hit its highest level in three years, brought on by falling prices in mainstream household items.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sentiment in household income rose 7% from -25% to -18% \u2013 leading to consumers being able to increase spending on luxury goods without fear of financial reprisal later on.\u00a0 Similarly, spending on essential items is also down for the third successive quarter, the survey showed, despite wages not rising as fast as inflation and concerns about the rising cost of living.<\/p>\n
Consequently, more and more are spending money on such things as holidays, which rose to its highest point since the survey began in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven without growth in real incomes, consumer confidence has continued to rise,\u201d Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte, said.<\/p>\n
He also suggested that confidence has been boosted by a strong jobs market, with fewer consumers suffering a reduction or loss of income in the third quarter compared with the same period last year.\u00a0 The once beleaguered job market has recently seen a marked drop in unemployment and a rise in job security, meaning fewer consumers are reserving their extra income for rainy day funds.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Lloyds Bank Spending Report has similarly found that consumers felt that they had more scope for extra spending due to a fall in the price of essential items, namely food and petrol.\u00a0 The bank found that a 0.5% drop in expenditure on essential items had been part of a three month consecutive fall in overall spending.<\/p>\n
Specifically, spending on fuel was down 6% compared with last year, and gas and electricity bills were roughly 5% lower.<\/p>\n
Greg Coughlan, the director of personal current accounts at Lloyds Bank, said that there was a trend of continued improvement in consumer confidence throughout the year, despite also pointing to a second overall dip this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to the latest from the Deloitte Consumer Tracker, consumer confidence has hit its highest level in three years, brought on by falling prices in mainstream household items.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bainesjewitt.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}