Reply #14: U.S. consumer confidence up slightly [View All]

The board's consumer confidence index rose to 103.4 in January from an upwardly revised 102.7 in December. Read the full report.

Economists were expecting a slight decline to about 101.5, according to a survey conducted by MarketWatch. See Economic Calendar.

Other consumer attitude surveys, such as the University of Michigan and the ABC/Washington Post indexes, had signaled some deterioration in confidence in January.

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A growing number of consumers said jobs were plentiful, compared with December. In January, 20.7 percent said jobs were plentiful while 24.7 percent said jobs were hard to get, compared with 19.4 percent plentiful and 26.4 percent hard to get in December.

The number of consumers saying the economy is good rose to 26 percent from 24.4 percent, but the number of consumers saying the economy is bad also increased slightly to 18.2 percent.

In a separate report, the National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes fell in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.69 million from 6.92 million in November. For all of 2004, a record 6.675 million homes were sold.



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