American consumers are growing increasingly worried about the economy, according to a Fed survey released Monday.
Sentiments around unemployment, job loss, and earnings growth all declined month-over-month, data from the central bank’s March 2025 Survey of Customer Expectations shows. Expectations around the stock market reached the lowest level since June 2022.
The mean expected probability that the unemployment rate will be higher one year from now climbed by 4.6 percentage points to 44%, the highest level since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020. The mean perceived probability of losing one’s job at some point in the next year increased by 1.6 percentage points to 15.7%, the highest mark in a year. The increase was largest for those with annual household incomes below $50,000.
Household income growth expectations also declined, with the share of households expecting to be in a worse financial situation one year from now climbing to 30% — the highest reading since October 2023. Americans also became more pessimistic about credit access, with a majority of consumers reporting that it’s harder to obtain credit now than a year ago.
Respondents also had a hard view of inflation, with the median expectation being a 3.6% increase one year from now — a 0.5-percentage-point increase from February and the highest reading since October 2023.
Expectations that the stock market will improve over the next year fell to 33.8%, a 3.2-percentage-point drop from February and the lowest reading since June 2022.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 5% in 2025. The tech-heavy Nasdaq is down 13.2%, and the S&P 500 is down 8.3% as President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs continue to wreak havoc within international markets.