Consumer confidence continued to slip in the Mountain region in April, while Salt Lake City's "help wanted" advertising index remains far above the other cities included in analyses by The Conference Board.
The Conference Board, based in New York, on Wednesday said the consumer confidence index in the Mountain region was 97.8 in April. While that's above the year-ago figure of 94.9, it represents a drop from January's 119, February's 104.3 and March's 98.4. The low point during the past year was July 2003, when it registered 73.9.
Nationally, the index was 92.9 in April, up from 81 a year ago. The index stood at 97.7 in January but had dropped to 88.5 in both February and March.
The Conference Board said the West North Central region had the biggest consumer-confidence gains during the past year, while the East South Central area had the smallest gains among its nine U.S. regions.
The board noted that while help-wanted advertising has been flat over the past year for most of the country, the eight-state Rocky Mountain region had a March-to-March increase from 67 to 76. It was at 78 in February.
Salt Lake City, meanwhile, leads the pack among 31 listed cities. Its help-wanted advertising index was 155 in March. While down from February's 160, it was an increase over 131 in March 2003. The next-highest index in the listings was San Antonio, at 118.
The Conference Board uses 1987 as a base year with a 100 index. The national figure for March was 39, down from 40 in February and the same figure recorded in March 2003.