Consumer confidence holds steady in March

Americans seem more resigned to the hardships of the recession as consumer confidence stabilized in March after falling to an all-time low in February.

But economists caution that shoppers, who are dealing with shrinking retirement funds, falling home values and worries about job security, are still very gloomy and that any improvement in sentiment is fragile.

“There is a sense that consumers are now familiar [with] how bad things are,” said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group in Princeton, N.J. “They have read the papers. They recognize that the job market is awful.”

Some recent glimmers of better economic data helped stem further sharp declines in sentiment, which remains the lowest since at least 1967, when the index began. The consumer confidence index issued Tuesday by the New York-based Conference Board edged up to 26.0 in March from a revised 25.3 reading in February. It had fallen from 37.4 in January and is less than half its level of a year earlier.

Many people seem to be adjusting to the harsh realities.

Barbara Fera, 63, a cosmetologist from Warwick, R.I., said that she’s not spending like she used to -- buying a new jacket or purse whenever she felt like it --but also that she’s not going to be “doom and gloom.”

Fera’s 401(k) lost money, but “time will bring that back,” she said while shopping for her grandchildren in Rhode Island’s Providence Place mall. “We just have to be patient.”

Claude DeAlmeida, 40, of Fall River, Mass., expressed a calm resolve to ride out the downturn.

“Every month I feel a little better about it,” DeAlmeida said.