The government shutdown has halted the collection and reporting of a lot of federal data — data we rely on to understand how everyone’s doing in this economy. Being in a data drought, clues that do not come from the government are especially important.

One of those clues came out Tuesday morning: the consumer confidence index from The Conference Board. It fell slightly in October, and it showed that consumers are still anxious about the economy and the job market.

On average, consumers are feeling ambivalent-to-glum.

“It seems confidence has been stuck,” said Stephanie Guichard, a Conference Board senior economist. “And it’s not moving out of this very narrow range where it has been since June.”

The reasons will probably not shock you.

“It’s overwhelmingly inflation and prices, and second to that is tariffs,” Guichard said.

Of course, it depends on who you ask. For younger people and those making less than $75,000 a year, confidence fell. For older people and those making more, confidence rose. For people making more than $200,000 a year, it rose a lot.

“It’s consistent with an economy where higher income households, particularly those that are homeowners and have been homeowners for a while, are perceiving the economy as being doing better,” said Matt Luzzetti, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank.

They’re more likely to own stock, and stocks are doing great, so they feel great about it.

“At the same time, those households that are younger or at the lower end of the income distribution are experiencing more pressures,” Luzzetti said.

Now, what consumers think and what consumers do are two very different things. People can be depressed but still click “add to cart.” So consumer confidence isn’t a great predictor of overall spending. 

But there is one thing consumer feelings do predict well: The unemployment rate. Part of the consumer confidence survey asks about how hard it is to get a job.

“What’s interesting is, so you take the number of people saying the jobs are plentiful, and take away the share of people who are saying that jobs are hard to get, then that spread tends to be quite a good leading indicator of the unemployment rate,” said Bradley Saunders, an economist with Capital Economics.  

More people said jobs were plentiful in October than the month before, and fewer people said jobs were hard to get. That would suggest, said Saunders, the unemployment rate is not going to rise by much if at all. Which is a confidence… boost.