After four months of falling, consumer confidence on overall economy rises, but down again on jobs

Consumer confidence in the economy broke four months of downward slide, the private, non-partisan Conference Board reported Tuesday. But the board found that Americans are still deeply concerned about the labor market.

The consumer confidence index, which a consensus of analysts had forecast would fall for the fifth straight month, rose to 65.9 in July, from a revised 62.7 in June, which was first reported at 62. The board's survey clashed with the Thomson Reuters-University of Michigan consumer sentiment report last week. That one showed U.S. consumers feeling less optimistic than the previous month.

Of the data, the director of the board's Economic Indicators at the Conference Board, Lynn Franco, stated in a press release:

Despite this month's improvement in confidence, the overall Index remains at historically low levels. Consumers' attitude regarding current conditions was little changed in July, but their short-term expectations, which had declined last month, bounced back. However, while consumers expressed greater optimism about short-term business and employment prospects, they have grown more pessimistic about their earnings. Given the current economic environment'in particular the weak labor market'consumer confidence is not likely to gain any significant momentum in the coming months."

In mid-July, the Conference Board reported the second drop in three months of its Leading Economic Indicators, a much-watched 10-item basket of gauges of the economy's direction. Said Ken Goldstein, a board economist:

The U.S. economy is growing very slowly. The CEI basically reflects this steady but soft pace of overall economic activity. The LEI is pointing to no strengthening over the next few months, as the economy continues to sail through strong headwinds domestically and internationally.

On the jobs front, the board's index for July showed Americans still deeply pessimistic. The survey found 7.8 percent of respondents think jobs now are "plentiful," while 40.8 percent think jobs are "hard to get."

Two major jobs reports will be released this week. On Wednesday, Automatic Data Processing will announce the results of its survey of private-sector job creation. Expert consensus forecasts that the seasonally adjusted ADP number of new jobs will be 120,000.

For June, ADP reported 176,000 private-sector jobs giving hope that there would be a break in the slowdown of the labor market we've seen since March. But when the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics' report appeared two days later, it concluded that only 80,000 net new jobs had been created. Consensus for the BLS report for July, which will be released Friday, is for 100,000 new jobs.