U.S. Consumer Health Index
The Consumer Health Index (CHI) is Morning Consult’s proprietary gauge of consumer demand. Unlike traditional economic indicators that have significant time lags, the CHI provides a near real-time signal of consumer behavior, equipping business leaders with a forward-looking tool to respond quickly to emerging trends.
This index combines a predictive measure of consumers’ ability to afford purchases (lagged changes in unemployment) with a real-time indicator of consumers’ willingness to spend (the index of current personal financial conditions) to estimate consumers’ overall demand.
Key Takeaways
While consumer demand remains at a healthy level, momentum began to fade in September. The Consumer Health Index (CHI) remains in positive territory after a strong recovery in 2025, but has slipped lower for the past four consecutive weeks as weaker labor conditions and jittery sentiment cause more consumers to think twice about purchases.
Spending likely grew less strongly last month. In August, robust CHI readings helped preview the higher-than-expected retail sales and personal consumption expenditures reported by the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis, respectively. Morning Consult's data suggests that September was slightly less rosy in terms of spending growth, though at the time of this writing it is unclear if and when the official data will be released due to the government shutdown.
The component of CHI linked to the labor market suggests demand may continue to slow through October. The index is constructed from a combination of real-time sentiment data and lagged changes in unemployment. This latter component allows us to look ahead to its future influence on CHI in the coming weeks, and the recent weakening in labor conditions suggests that, all else equal, demand will slow further over the next month.
Demand levels are diverging across various demographic groups as economic headwinds disproportionately affect certain segments. In addition to to the widening gap in CHI scores between high and low income adults, different age groups are increasingly experiencing divergent economic conditions. The youngest and oldest adults have recently had a downturn in CHI scores as workers on the margins of the labor market--those with the least years of experience or those nearing retirement--face harsher hiring conditions, while mid-career professionals have more stability in the current environment in which both layoffs and hiring remain minimal.
Data Downloads
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Reading this data
The metric is designed to approximate momentum in spending growth, with scores above zero indicative of expansion and scores below zero signaling contracting demand.
Consumer Health Index: Demographic Trends
Consumer Health Index: Underlying Components
Methodology
Consult our methodology document for additional details on sampling and data collection procedures.
How the index was calculated
The theoretical composition of the Consumer Health Index called for combining two variables: A measure of sentiment, reflective of consumers’ desire to spend, and a measure of labor market strength serving as a proxy of consumers’ ability to spend. Morning Consult collects both the ICS and its Unemployment Index on a daily basis, enabling a real-time gauge of consumer demand.
To optimize the relevance of the Consumer Health Index, multiple formulations of the Unemployment Index as well as the ICS and each of its underlying components were analyzed to identify the strongest relationship between these metrics and spending (defined in this case as annual growth in real personal consumption expenditures form the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ as well as the Census Bureau’s retail sales data).
The best-performing ICS component was Current Personal Financial conditions for the contemporaneous period. This result makes intuitive sense, as a consumers’ attitude about their personal financial state on any given day can instantaneously impact spending decisions. For the unemployment index, the link with spending was more gradual and leading: The net change in 6-month average unemployment, three months ahead, showed the closest correlation with spending. Again, the delayed impact of changes in unemployment levels on spending makes logical sense: When a consumer loses his or her job, it may take several months for spending to be pared back as that worker can temporarily rely on savings or unemployment insurance to maintain his or her previous level of spending. Conversely, when a newly employed worker starts a new job, his or her spending might not immediately shift higher as the first several paychecks may be put toward replenishing savings or paying off debt incurred while the worker was still unemployed.
How the Consumer Health Index complements existing metrics
Measures of consumer confidence, such as Morning Consult’s Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) have been explored as a predictive gauge of consumer spending. However, the relationship between consumer confidence and spending is not stable. The variables dominating the trajectory of sentiment vary over time, leading to fluctuations in the relative strength or weakness in how closely spending patterns are associated with shifts in sentiment. A recent example has been playing out in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic: When soaring inflation in 2022 tanked sentiment, topline consumer spending remained surprisingly resilient. The ICS is informative as a metric capturing the overall mood of consumers, but is insufficient on its own as a proxy for consumer spending.
A key driver of spending is income, with the bulk of earnings for U.S. adults dependent on labor market outcomes. In the 2022 example, when the discrepancy between sentiment and spending widened, a strong labor market was a critical facilitator of strong spending despite high inflation. Employment conditions are not explicitly accounted for by the ICS, so in devising a more holistic measure of consumer demand it makes intuitive sense that a metric tracking labor market strength could serve as the missing piece.
About Morning Consult
Morning Consult is a global decision intelligence company changing how modern leaders make smarter, faster, better decisions. The company pairs its proprietary high-frequency data with applied artificial intelligence to better inform decisions on what people think and how they will act.
Kayla Bruun is the lead economist at decision intelligence company Morning Consult, where she works on descriptive and predictive analysis that leverages Morning Consult’s proprietary high-frequency economic data. Prior to joining Morning Consult, Kayla was a key member of the corporate strategy team at telecommunications company SES, where she produced market intelligence and industry analysis of mobility markets.
Kayla also served as an economist at IHS Markit, where she covered global services industries, provided price forecasts, produced written analyses and served as a subject-matter expert on client-facing consulting projects. Kayla earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Emory University and an MBA with a certificate in nonmarket strategy from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. For speaking opportunities and booking requests, please email [email protected]
