Somewhat surprisingly, the US consumer mood held up in April despite what Conference Board chief economist Dana Peterson described as “material concern about rising gasoline prices.”

The headline print on the confidence gauge was 92.8 in Tuesday’s release, up from March and better than expected.

Of course, this is highly relative. Both of America’s main mood rings (if you will) continue to suggest households have rarely, if ever, been more disillusioned.

Even at a four-month high, the Conference Board headline’s near levels seen during the pandemic-blighted 2020. Tellingly, it remains below 2022’s nadir, which means that in aggregate anyway, voters are more vexed today than they were when headline CPI sported a nine-handle.

Both the present situation gauge and the expectations index improved, and each beat estimates, even as the latter remains well below levels that’ve typically presaged recession.

The relative buoyancy (and, again, words like “buoyant” are total misnomers in the context of US consumer moods) is due to improving perceptions of the jobs landscape. Like the headline confidence index, the closely-watched labor differential hit a fourth-month high in Tuesday’s release.

Recall that University of Michigan sentiment hit a record low in the preliminary readout for April. It was revised slightly higher in the final release for this month.

The figure shows you the average of the Michigan and Conference Board surveys. It’s only been lower one other time: After “Liberation Day.”

Not surprisingly, write-in responses for the April edition of the Conference Board poll were littered with war references.

“Factors affecting the economy continued to skew towards pessimism,” Peterson went on. “Comments about prices, oil and gas, and war increased in frequency compared to March, a likely signal of consumers’ underlying worries about how the war in the Middle East will impact their pockets.”