Area’s consumer confidence falls
Region’s outlook ignores state trend
Consumers in the Buffalo Niagara region can’t shake their gloomy outlook.
A new survey of consumer confidence released Wednesday found that Buffalo Niagara residents are the most pessimistic in New York and aren’t much more upbeat than they were at the end of last year, when the economic downturn hit with full force.
The results showed that consumers in the Buffalo Niagara region are bucking both the statewide and national trend showing steady improvement in consumer sentiment, according to researchers at the Siena Research Institute, which conducts the quarterly survey of future buying plans.
Local consumer confidence weakened slightly during the second quarter, making the Buffalo Niagara region one of just two metropolitan areas where sentiment levels declined during the spring among the nine New York cities included in the Siena survey.
“All in all, statewide, it was a pretty good quarter. For Buffalo, not the best,” said Douglas Lonnstrom, a Siena professor and the founding director of the research institute. “You’re at the bottom of the barrel at this stage.”
The region’s consumer confidence index fell by less than a point to 53.7 during the second quarter, the third-lowest since Siena began compiling its sentiment index in the fourth quarter of 2001. While the index is up from its all-time low of 50.1 in the fourth quarter of last year, it is down from 54.4 in the first quarter.
Lonnstrom said the struggles of the region’s manufacturers likely are contributing to the dour outlook of local consumers. Manufacturers have cut 5 percent of the region’s factory jobs over the last year as the
auto industry has struggled mightily in the weakening economy.
Rising energy prices, as well as the political stalemate in the state Senate, also are weighing on consumers, he said.
“These are not good numbers, but they’re better than they were in the fourth quarter, so that’s a good thing,” Lonnstrom said.
While consumer confidence levels are up 4 percent in the Buffalo Niagara region over the last year, that increase is far less than the gains of roughly 20 percent in the Albany, Utica, mid-Hudson and New York City regions.
The improvement has been far weaker in the central and western portions of the state, with sentiment levels over the last year up 7 percent in Binghamton, 9 percent in Syracuse and 11 percent in Rochester. Lonnstrom said the heavier reliance on manufacturing in these areas may explain the slower rebound than in eastern New York, where government and financial services play a bigger role in the economy.
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