U.S. Consumer Confidence Is at 17-Year High

U.S. consumer confidence jumped to a 17-year high as optimism about employment prospects grew and Americans began seeing additional money in their paychecks from recently enacted tax cuts, data from the New York-based Conference Board showed Tuesday.

The report reflects increased confidence in employment and incomes, which could support consumer spending. The labor differential, which measures the gap between respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those who say they’re hard to get, rose to 24.7 percentage points, the highest since 2001.

“Despite the recent stock market volatility, consumers expressed greater optimism about short-term prospects for business and labor market conditions, as well as their financial prospects,” Lynn Franco, the Conference Board’s director of economic indicators, said in a statement. “Overall, consumers remain quite confident that the economy will continue expanding at a strong pace in the months ahead.”

Recent tax legislation signed in December may have also buoyed sentiment, as many Americans saw bigger after-tax paychecks in February due to the law. That may have helped consumers shrug off the early-February 10 percent decline in stock prices, which have since recovered most of their losses.