The District Sentinel Discontent Index continued to fall in February but decelerated, dropping on a month-over-month basis by 0.58 points to 105.09, from 105.65 in January.
The decline, though modest, meant that the measure fell to its lowest level since the worldwide financial collapse of 2008 for the second consecutive month.
Falling most significantly, by 0.8 points to 29.14, was Labor Discontent. Housing Discontent fell by a mere 0.04 points to 105.09, while Consumer Discontent actually increased by 0.58 to 31.64.
The labor subcomponent dropped as job market gauges posted impressive gains in February. Underemployment fell at a monthly rate to 10.8 percent—a decline of a half-percentage point—while unemployment dropped by 0.2 percent, to 5.5. The net impact of discouraged workers leaving the job market was a wash, too, with the employment-to-population ratio holding steady at 59.3 percent.
The improvement in the situation for jobseekers caused Labor Discontent to decrease despite an increase in strike activity. The number of workers who participated in “major work stoppages” in February was up by a month-over-month basis to 8,300, from 5,200.
The largest of the two major disputes involved an action organized by United Steelworkers with the backing of 6,600 oil industry employees. The other work stoppage involved 1,700 striking FairPoint Communications workers in New England who first walked out on the job on Oct. 17.
Consumer Discontent, meanwhile, was driven upward by a fall in the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index after two months of volatile swings. The measure of US consumers’ aggregate mood was down on a monthly basis in February to 98.8 from 103.8, after a 10.7-point one-month spike in January.
Housing Discontent would have fallen further, with non-supervisory workers earning more in February, but the rate of seriously delinquent FHA-backed mortgages increased for the first time since June 2014. The upturn in the measure of housing market woes was, however, barely noticeable at 0.01 percent.
The last time the Discontent Index cross the 105-point threshold, it was on the way up between May and June in 2008, as Wall Street’s chicanery stood poised to send cause systemic disarray throughout the world.
Between its January 2004 baseline (DI=99.9, all three sub-indexes=33.3) and its public launch in late 2014, the Discontent Index peaked at 144.35 in Aug. 2011 – one month before the Occupy Wall Street movement started. Its record low was 87.65 in Dec. 2006 – when unemployment reached a post-tech bubble recession trough of 4.4 percent.
Find out more about the Discontent Index and its components and inputs here.
