I’d like to tell you the latest vintage of the New York Fed’s consumer survey is important when it comes to the monetary policy decision calculus, not only because that’d make it more exciting to cover, but also because you’d be inclined to think a Fed survey would be relevant for the people conducting it.

Alas, in my experience the poll isn’t especially relevant for policymakers. If that’s not quite accurate, we can fairly assess that the monthly survey is nowhere near the top of the list when it comes to policy inputs.

With that in mind, there was good news and bad news from the May vintage. The good news was that year-ahead inflation expectations were the lowest in two years, at just 4.07%.

The bad news is that three-year expectations rose further, to 3%, the highest since December. That’s nowhere near the peaks seen in late 2021, but it’s nevertheless an example of a “wrong way” dynamic. As a reminder nobody needs, the Fed cares far more about longer run expectations than consumers’ one-year outlook.

It’s notable that the NY Fed survey’s three-year measure is now consistent with the longer-term outlook from the University of Michigan survey, an update on which is due Friday.

Household spending intentions, which in April fell to the lowest since September of 2021, ticked back up, which is either a welcome development (if you’re concerned about a recession) or an unwelcome development (if you’re concerned that consumer resilience will keep inflation elevated).

Consistent with very high home prices (notwithstanding minuscule YoY declines seen in March and April) and other onerous realities in a still-distorted housing market, median home price growth expectations rose a fourth month.

2.6% in May counted as the highest reading since July, when house prices were in the process of peaking.

As the figure shows, home price growth expectations for higher-income Americans have now rebounded smartly after flatlining last year. The increase was more pronounced among folks residing in the West census regions. Recall that home equity declines for Western states in Q1 were fairly dramatic when measured versus the same period last year.

Finally, I should mention that the mean perceived probability of losing one’s job over the next 12 months decreased to 10.9% in the NY Fed poll. That was the lowest in over a year, and just a tick above the series record low.