The highlight from last month’s New York Fed consumer survey was a new peak+ in the share of households reporting that credit was harder to obtain.

Fast forward a month, and the key takeaways from the latest vintage of the poll were 19-month lows in both the outlook for household spending and the perceived ease of finding a new job in the event of being laid off.

Median household spending growth expectations fell half a point to 5.2% in April, the lowest since September 2021. Spending plans for lower-income households actually ticked up last month, but those for middle- and higher-income families were both lower.

I assume readers can write the boilerplate copy themselves. The Fed needs spending to slow so that corporates don’t have as much pricing power and might therefore be less inclined to perpetuate inflation by leaning on consumers to absorb higher wage bills and input costs.

Although the mean probability of finding a new job within 90 days fell to 55.2%, likewise the lowest since September 2021 and among the lowest readings since late 2016 excluding the pandemic, the series isn’t especially useful, or at least it doesn’t seem so to me.

I’m sure the New York Fed would be happy to explain why I’m wrong, but right up until the last few months, and depending on how insistent you are on finding a new job that’s exactly comparable to your previous occupation, the mean probability of finding a new job within 90 days in the US was closer to 100% than 50%. There were between 10 and 11 million open jobs across the country.

As noted here at the outset, perceptions of credit access are crucial to the macro narrative in the wake of the bank turmoil, and many observers were quick to suggest last month that a new high in the combined share of respondents saying credit was either “much harder” to obtain or “somewhat harder” in the March NY Fed poll was a harbinger. Those fears weren’t borne out, or at least not in any kind of dramatic way.

Although the combined share loitered near a record, suggestive of an ongoing credit crunch, it was lower versus last month’s peak.

Still, as the visual shows, credit conditions are basically the most onerous in the short history of the survey, a reflection, one assumes, of tighter monetary policy.

And yet, consumers are still spending. Or at least they were. Data released late last week showed revolving credit posted one of the largest monthly increases on record in March.

Relatedly, but also separately, Morgan Stanley on Monday released the latest installment of their “AlphaWise” consumer poll. “Consumers continue to expect a pullback in spending for most categories over the next six months,” the bank said, noting that Americans “still plan to spend more on essentials like groceries and household supplies” on net, but expect to “pull back on discretionary goods spending.

Grocery was “the only category” where low- and middle-income consumers said they expected to spend more over the next six months. Those households, Morgan Stanley said, “are not planning to spend more on any services category.” The bank called it “interesting” that even high-income families plan to spend less on food away from home and leisure services.

Coming back to the NY Fed survey, year-ahead inflation expectations dropped to 4.4%, the second lowest since May of 2021. But, in unwelcome, if mostly immaterial, news for the Fed, expectations at both the three- and five-year points moved higher, to 2.9% and 2.6%, respectively.