The results are in, and the reviews aren’t great.

The New York Fed on Thursday released the latest installment of its monthly consumer poll, not a top-tier macro update by any stretch of the imagination, but usually worth a mention all the same.

The newest vintage garnered more attention than it might’ve otherwise given the survey period: Responses were gathered from April 1 through April 30, which is to say the results reflect household perceptions of the economy post-“Liberation Day.”

The blue-shaded area in the figure below shows the combined share of households who said their financial situation was either “somewhat” worse versus a year ago or “much” worse. The white line shows the same combined share looking ahead one year.

As you can see, expectations have deteriorated dramatically since January. Specifically, the combined share expecting their financial situation to be worse in a year was just 20% when Donald Trump took office. It’s 36% now.

Plainly, that’s attributable to tariff uncertainty and a generalized sense that the administration lacks a coherent plan for… well, for anything.

Note that the blue-shaded area’s been elevated since inflation took off. Over that period, the economy grew briskly, as did wages. The juxtaposition between those outcomes and dour household moods is the defining feature of the post-pandemic macro environment in the US. Put differently: The blue-shaded area illustrates the endemic nature of the so-called “vibecession” and, relatedly, the psychological impact of inflation.

The same poll showed the average surveyed probability of a higher jobless rate in a year ticked up again, hitting 44.1%.

The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that April’s increase was negligible — 0.02ppt to be precise. But, as the figure reminds you, the two-month increase recorded in February and March on that measure was staggering.

The rest of the survey results weren’t too bad under the circumstances, but it’s glaringly obvious that households could’ve done without the uncertainty engendered by “Liberation Day.”

Speaking of uncertainty, disagreement among respondents around future inflation outcomes (i.e., the interquartile range) increased at every measured horizon. Medium-term inflation expectations rose to 3.2%, the highest since July of 2022.