The District Sentinel Discontent Index fell below 100 points in October for the first time since before the Great Recession.
The measure dropped to 99.72, down from 101.79 in September and 102.05 in August.
The decrease was caused by improvements in the labor and housing markets. Housing Discontent and and Labor Discontent respectively fell by 2.33 points and 1 point.
Driving the decline to the housing subcomponent was another sharp drop in the percentage of seriously delinquent FHA-backed mortgages—down to 5.76 percent from 6 percent in September and 6.2 percent in August. In July, the same measure of troubled borrowers fell by 0.42 points to 6 percent.
Labor Discontent, meanwhile, was largely down on lower underemployment and relatively calm industrial relations. The number of workers involved in major work stoppages monitored by BLS increased in September to 9,500 from 3,400, but by October, it was back at its August level again. In the same time-frame, underemployment (U-6) decreased by half a percentage point to 9.8 percent.
Consumer Discontent, the third subcomponent, was at 31.50 in October. In August and September, it was at 31.74 and 31.49.
The last time that the Discontent Index was below 100 points was in March 2008. It was then at 99.89 and on the rise, with the global financial crisis months away.
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 trough of 4.4 percent.
There was no Discontent Index update in December. This release therefore contains two months of data.
Find out more about the Discontent Index and its components and inputs here.
