The nationwide consumer mood stayed locked at 90.3 this week, according to the Morning Consult Index of Consumer Sentiment. Yet underneath that flat surface, wealthier and middle-class Americans moved in opposite directions. Confidence among high-income adults dropped 2.8 points to 108.4, wiping out a chunk of the gains they made the week before.
This pullback lined up with a downward turn on Wall Street, where the S&P 500 slipped by about 1.6% over the course of the week. Meanwhile, middle-income households making between $50,000 and $100,000 went the other way, seeing their own confidence index climb by 1.7 points to reach 92.2.
One bright spot cutting across all income brackets is a relief in how people view rising prices. Morning Consult’s measure of indirect consumer inflation expectations dipped by 0.3 percentage points, landing at 4.5% overall among adults.
The middle-income bracket saw the sharpest weekly drop, falling 0.4 points to 5.3%. For families making under $50,000, inflation expectations fell 0.3 points to 4.0%. That brings lower-income expectations close to where they stood before the major inflation surge of 2022, a shift that aligns with the steady, recent decline of prices at the gas pump.
While consumers are delivering a mixed bag, the outlook among small and medium-sized businesses is hitting historic highs. In the second quarter of 2026, a record 69.4% of small business owners stated that current conditions make it a good time to expand their companies.
That is a massive 15-percentage-point jump from the first quarter of the year, marking the single highest level of expansion optimism across all 15 waves of the tracking data since it began in the third quarter of 2022.
On the flip side, the number of owners calling this a bad time to grow plummeted by 10.7 points down to 18.4%. Much of this confidence appears tied to the financial pipeline, as 28.1% of business owners reported that getting a loan has become easier—another record high for the survey.
However, this eagerness to build out business operations is not translating into an immediate hiring boom. The share of small businesses keeping their staffing levels steady fell significantly, dropping 11.8 percentage points to 51.8% in the second quarter, down from a series high of 63.6% in the first quarter.
Instead, minor layoffs edged up slightly across monthly, quarterly, and annual measurements. Because small and medium businesses employ roughly half of the entire U.S. private sector workforce, this divergence is critical. The data points to a business landscape that feels highly confident making strategic moves and investments, but remains deeply cautious about committing to the long-term overhead of new headcount.
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