GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) _ Consumer confidence is dropping for the second straight month.
The monthly University of Florida consumer sentiment survey released Friday fell seven points from April.
The new survey shows that consumer sentiment was 87.6 in May. That’s on a scale of 2 to 150 benchmarked to 1966 at a value of 100.
Floridians confidence had reached a post-recession peak earlier this year. But there has been a sharp decline since March.
Chris McCarty, director of the university center that does the survey, said in a statement that economists had not anticipated a “reversal of this magnitude.” He said the drop appeared to be caused by fears about the future.
McCarty said that young people and lower-income workers see “difficult times ahead in their own finances in the next year.”