Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in two and a half years, dropping in December across all sectors and all regions, the Conference Board of Canada reported Thursday.
At 69.9, the board's consumer confidence index dropped 6.5 points from November, and is down 11.1 points from where it stood in December 2010, the Board said.
A sampling of Canadians were asked four questions about the current situation and their expectations for the future in order to determine the index number. The survey, conducted between Dec. 8 and 18, after months of market volatility and global economic uncertainty, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 per cent.
"The balance of opinion eroded on all four questions - but responses to the major purchases question were particularly gloomy," the board said, referring to the question which asks whether now is a good time to make a major purchase, such as a car, a home or major appliance.
The number saying it was not a good time rose 3.5 percentage points to 54.3% -- more than 10 points higher than in December 2010 -- while the number saying it was a good time declined for the eighth straight month, down 1.9 percentage points to 34.1%.
Just 15.2% of respondents said they were better off than six months previously, down 1.9% from November, and the number saying they were worse off rose 3.3 percentage points to 24.3%, numbers that are "significantly more pessimistic than they were at this time last year," the board said. "Negative responses have now outnumbered positive ones since 2008."
Their outlook for the next six months isn't any brighter: The number of consumers expecting their situations to worsen jumped to 17.3% from 15.2% in November.
The number of Canadians saying they expected to see fewer jobs in six months rose to 27.4%, the highest level since the summer of 2009, the board said, reflecting recent job losses and a rise in the unemployment rate in November to 7.4%.
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