When is the July 2026 US consumer confidence report released?

The Conference Board publishes its Consumer Confidence Index for July 2026 on Tuesday 28 July at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time, the last Tuesday of the month, which is its standard release slot. That places it roughly 28 hours before the Federal Open Market Committee announces its policy decision at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday 29 July — the last piece of household-level data the market receives before the Fed speaks. The release covers preliminary results collected through a cut-off in the final full week of the month; June's preliminary cut-off was 23 June.

What was the last consumer confidence reading?

The June 2026 index rose 0.6 points to 91.2, from a downwardly revised 90.6 in May, undershooting a consensus near 94.3. The headline was the least interesting part. The Present Situation Index — consumers' read on current business and labour conditions — fell 3.0 points to 116.4, its lowest since February 2021, while the Expectations Index rose 3.0 points to 74.4, the best of 2026 so far but still below the 80 level the Conference Board notes has historically signalled a recession within a year. It has been below 80 since February 2025. Twelve-month inflation expectations eased to 6.0%, the lowest since February, which the Conference Board attributed to falling oil prices in the weeks before the survey closed.

Why does consumer confidence move the US dollar?

Through the growth factor first and the interest-rate factor second — two of the five fundamental drivers a currency-strength model scores. Household consumption is roughly two-thirds of US GDP, so a survey that leads spending intentions is a forward read on the growth differential between the United States and its peers, and the dollar trades on differentials rather than levels. The transmission to rates is more immediate: the survey's labour internals feed directly into how the market prices the Fed path, and it is the expected path — not the level set on any given day — that anchors the dollar. A confidence print is therefore a rate-expectations input dressed as a sentiment number.

Why do consumer confidence and Michigan sentiment disagree right now?

Because they measure different things over different windows. The University of Michigan survey weights personal finances and inflation heavily, which makes it unusually sensitive to petrol prices; the Conference Board's index weights labour-market perceptions much more heavily, which makes it sensitive to hiring. Timing compounds the gap this month. Michigan's preliminary July reading of 54.4, a five-month high, was collected in the first half of July when pump prices were falling. The Conference Board's July window runs later — and the AAA national average for regular petrol jumped 15 cents in a single week to $4.09 on 23 July as crude spiked. The two surveys are looking at different Julys.

Will the July print change the Fed's July 29 decision?

Almost certainly not the decision itself — the committee's July stance was effectively settled before the survey lands, and a hold at 3.50–3.75% remains the base case. What a confidence print can plausibly move is the tone of the statement's risk language and the framing of Chair Warsh's press conference, and beyond that the September pricing that has done all the recent repricing. Fed funds futures have moved to roughly an 80% chance of a hike by September, up from about 52% a week earlier. A materially weaker labour differential is one of the few household-level datapoints that could soften that number before the August data cycle begins.

Consumer Confidence Preview (July 2026): 'Jobs Hard to Get' at 22.5%, the Highest Since 2021 — What the July 28 Print Means for the Dollar a Day Before the Fed

The Conference Board publishes its July Consumer Confidence Index on Tuesday 28 July 2026 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern, roughly 28 hours before the Federal Reserve announces its decision. June's headline inched up 0.6 points to 91.2, and the headline was the least useful thing in the release. Underneath it, the Present Situation Index fell to 116.4 — its lowest since February 2021 — and the share of consumers saying jobs are "hard to get" climbed to 22.5%, the highest reading since January 2021. That collapsed the survey's labour differential to just +2.4 points, the narrowest since February 2021. July's survey also spans something the University of Michigan's mid-month sentiment reading missed entirely: the AAA national average for regular petrol jumping 15 cents in a single week to $4.09 on 23 July, as Brent crude closed above $100 for the first time since May. For the dollar, this is not a mood reading. It is a growth-factor and labour-market input arriving the morning before a live Fed meeting.

This is a clean case of why a fundamental read of a currency beats a price-only one. A price-only lens sees "consumer survey, second-tier data, ignore it" and moves on, or at best watches the headline number for a beat or a miss. Score the underlying factors separately and the same release does real work: the labour differential is arguably the highest-frequency household read on hiring available between the shock June payrolls print and the next employment report, the inflation-expectations line feeds the commodity channel that has driven the entire July repricing, and the Expectations Index is a growth-factor input on a country whose consumption is roughly two-thirds of GDP. One number, three of the five factors. The headline index tells you almost none of that.

Key takeaways

The July 2026 Consumer Confidence Index lands Tuesday 28 July at 10:00 a.m. ET — about 28 hours before the FOMC statement at 2:00 p.m. ET on Wednesday 29 July.
June's headline rose 0.6 points to 91.2 from a revised 90.6, undershooting a consensus near 94.3. It was the internals, not the headline, that moved.
The Present Situation Index fell 3.0 points to 116.4, its lowest since February 2021 — consumers' read on conditions *right now* is deteriorating even as the headline drifts sideways.
Jobs "hard to get" rose to 22.5%, the highest since January 2021, against 24.9% saying jobs are plentiful. The resulting labour differential of +2.4 was the narrowest since February 2021.
The Expectations Index rose to 74.4 — the best of 2026 — but has now sat below the 80 level the Conference Board flags as a historical recession signal since February 2025.
Timing is the story: June's survey closed on 23 June, when falling oil was easing price fears and 12-month inflation expectations dropped to 6.0%. July's window captures the reversal — petrol at $4.09 on 23 July, up 15 cents in a week.
That is why this print may diverge from Michigan's preliminary July sentiment of 54.4, a five-month high collected before the pump spike. Two surveys, two different Julys.
The labour differential is the tiebreaker in the Fed's central puzzle: June payrolls at just +57K say the labour market is cracking; jobless claims at 187,000 in the week to 18 July, the fewest since 1969, say nobody is being laid off.
See how the growth and interest-rate factors are scoring the dollar right now on the live meter.

When it lands, and why the timing is the whole point

The Conference Board releases the Consumer Confidence Index at 10:00 a.m. Eastern on the last Tuesday of each month, which for July 2026 is Tuesday 28 July — confirmed on the Conference Board's own release schedule. The FOMC statement follows at 2:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday 29 July, per the Federal Reserve's meeting calendar, with Chair Kevin Warsh's press conference at 2:30.

Twenty-eight hours is an awkward gap. It is far too short for the committee to rewrite a decision around a sentiment survey — the July stance is settled well before Tuesday morning. But it is comfortably long enough for the market to reprice the path, and the path is where all the action has been this month. As we set out in the July FOMC preview, implied odds of a July hike tripled to roughly 38% inside a week, while the far larger move came one meeting out: fed funds futures went to roughly an 80% probability of a hike by September, up from about 52% a week earlier. A non-projection meeting with no fresh dot plot means the statement and the press conference carry the entire signal — and Tuesday's survey is the last household-level datapoint that lands before they do.

What June actually said, once you look past 91.2

The June release is the baseline every scenario has to be measured against, and it is a genuinely odd one. The index rose. Almost everything inside it that describes the present got worse.

Component (June 2026)	Level	Change	Context
Headline index	91.2	+0.6	Missed a consensus near 94.3
Present Situation	116.4	−3.0	Lowest since February 2021
Expectations	74.4	+3.0	Best of 2026; below 80 since Feb 2025
Jobs "plentiful"	24.9%	—	—
Jobs "hard to get"	22.5%	higher	Highest since January 2021
Labour differential	+2.4	−2.6	Narrowest since February 2021
12-month inflation expectations	6.0%	lower	Lowest since February

The split between the two sub-indices is the tell. Consumers marked down what they see in front of them — business conditions, hiring, the job market they are actually in — while marking up what they expect over the next six months. That is a survey population that has stopped feeling good about the present and is running on hope about the near future, with the hope resting largely on cheaper energy. The Conference Board's own framing was explicit: confidence inched up in June "as falling oil prices in recent weeks provided some relief to consumer inflation fears," with the preliminary survey closing on 23 June.

Why the Expectations Index sitting below 80 matters — and why it doesn'tThe Conference Board notes that an Expectations Index below 80 has historically signalled a recession within the following year. It has now been below 80 continuously since February 2025 without a recession arriving. The honest reading is not that the signal has fired but that it has become a level, not an event — which is exactly why the *direction* and the composition matter more than the threshold. A rise toward 80 driven by income and business expectations is a growth-factor positive for the dollar; the same rise driven purely by cheaper petrol unwinds the moment petrol stops being cheap. See the live read on the USD currency page.

The labour differential is the number that decides this print

Strip the survey down to one series and it should be the labour differential — jobs "plentiful" minus jobs "hard to get." It is the closest thing to a monthly household census of hiring conditions, and it has a long record of tracking the unemployment rate's turning points before the official data confirms them.

It matters unusually much in late July 2026 because the Fed is staring at two labour readings that flatly contradict each other. June payrolls came in at just +57,000 with prior months revised down — the shock we covered in the June jobs report breakdown — which says hiring has stalled. Yet initial jobless claims fell to 187,000 in the week to 18 July, the fewest since 1969 and well below the roughly 212,000 expected, which says employers are not letting anyone go. Both can be true simultaneously: a low-hiring, low-firing labour market where the flow of new jobs dries up while the stock of existing ones stays intact.

That configuration is invisible to payrolls and invisible to claims, but it is exactly what the labour differential measures — because a worker in a job they cannot lose but could not replace will tell a survey that jobs are hard to get. June's 22.5% hard-to-get share, the highest in more than five years, is the first real evidence that households are living in that market. If July pushes the differential toward zero or negative, the survey will have corroborated the payrolls story over the claims story, and the growth factor for the dollar weakens regardless of what the headline index does.

Oil spikesBrent closes above $100 on 23 July

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Pump followsUS average petrol +15c to $4.09

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Survey captures itJuly window runs past the spike

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Two factors moveInflation expectations up, growth read down

The petrol problem: this survey is looking at a different July

Here is the detail most previews will miss. The two big US consumer surveys are being run over windows that no longer overlap in any meaningful way, and July is the month where that gap becomes material.

The University of Michigan's preliminary July sentiment reading came in at 54.4, a five-month high and a near-10% monthly jump, with year-ahead inflation expectations falling to 4.2% from 4.6% — driven, on the survey's own account, by easing prices at the pump. We covered that print in the July consumer sentiment breakdown. It was collected in the first half of the month.

Then energy turned. Brent settled up about 7% at $100.69 on 23 July, its first close above $100 since May, and the pump caught up fast: AAA reported the national average for regular petrol at $4.09 on 23 July, up 15 cents in a single week, with most states above $4. The Conference Board's July survey window runs to a cut-off in the final full week of the month — June's was 23 June — which means the July release is the first major US sentiment reading to contain the reversal rather than the rally.

Survey	July window	Petrol backdrop it saw	Weighting bias
Michigan (preliminary)	Early July	Falling pump prices	Personal finances, inflation
Conference Board	Through late July	15c weekly jump to $4.09	Labour-market conditions

If Tuesday's number disappoints against a Michigan reading that just hit a five-month high, the divergence is not noise and it is not a data error. It is two instruments sampling different weeks of an unusually volatile month.

Three scenarios, and what each does to the dollar

No firm consensus figure had settled at the time of writing, and it is worth being explicit about that rather than inventing one — June itself undershot a forecast near 94.3 by three points, so the forecast distribution around this series is wide. The more useful framing is directional, against June's verified 91.2 and its labour internals.

Scenario	What it looks like	Rate factor	Growth factor	Dollar read
Resilient	Headline holds above ~91 and the labour differential widens back out	Keeps September hike pricing intact	Supportive	Mildly USD-positive; confirms the claims story
Split (base case)	Headline soft, Expectations up on hope, differential narrows further	Neutral to slightly softer	Weakens	Muted on the day; a slow drag on the growth factor
Cracking	Headline drops well below 90 and the differential turns negative	Trims September hike odds	Clearly negative	USD-negative through rates and growth at once

Two nuances are worth holding onto. First, a rise in the survey's 12-month inflation expectations — reversing June's drop to 6.0% — is not a dollar positive in the way a hot CPI print is. Survey-based inflation expectations driven by petrol prices read to the Fed as an energy shock passing through, and this committee has spent July telling the market it is watching exactly that. A confidence report that is simultaneously weaker on labour and hotter on inflation expectations is the stagflationary combination that is hardest for a currency to price, because the rate factor and the growth factor move in opposite directions.

Second, the risk-sentiment factor cuts both ways for the dollar. A genuinely bad US consumer print weakens the growth differential, but it also tends to bid the dollar as a haven — which is precisely why reading a single price and calling it "the dollar's reaction to the data" so often produces the wrong conclusion. Scoring the factors separately is what separates a soft-growth dollar decline from a risk-off dollar rally that happens to occur on the same afternoon.

What this print is actually worth

Consumer confidence is not a market-moving release in the way CPI or payrolls are, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Its value on 28 July 2026 comes from position rather than power: it is the last household-level read before a live Fed meeting, it lands in the middle of a debate the Fed cannot resolve from payrolls and claims alone, and its survey window happens to straddle an energy reversal that no other July survey captured.

That is the case for watching the labour differential and the inflation-expectations line and largely ignoring the headline. The headline moved 0.6 points in June and told you nothing. The internals told you the present had deteriorated to a five-year low in the Present Situation Index and that a fifth of American households now think jobs are hard to come by. One of those readings is a number. The other is a fundamental factor changing.

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Educational macro context only — not investment advice.