Consumer Attitudes & Behavior

New York City -- The Conference Board’s Employment Trends Index, released Monday, increased in February for the fifth consecutive month.

According to the Conference Board, the index now stands at 101.7, up from January’s revised figure of 100.1. The index is up over 8% from a year ago.

For a company so often on the leading edge of offering its shopper affordable fashions in the apparel and home categories, there is one area where Target has been slow to keep pace with the prevailing trend.

The unemployment rate dipped from 9.0% in January to 8.9% in February, according to data released Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Construction employment grew by 33,000 in February, following a decline of 22,000 in January that may have reflected severe winter weather, according to the bureau. Within construction, specialty trade contractors accounted for the bulk of the February job gain (+28,000).

NEW YORK -- Consumers always want more. Whether it is a thinner, lighter iPad, a faster car or a muffin with more blueberries. The same is true in the world of coupons where a stumbling national economy caused shoppers to demand more coupons from consumer packaged goods companies.

The March issue of Fortune contains the magazine’s annual ranking of the most admired companies and this year’s list shows Walmart slipped two spots from the prior year and now occupies the 11 position.

Cincinnati -- Kroger Co. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter net income jumped 9.2% while sales rose 7.4%. It also announced that its board authorized a $1 billion stock repurchase plan.

Net income was $278.8 million, compared with $255.4 million in the year-ago period. Quarterly revenue rose to $19.9 billion, with same-store sales up 3.8%.

Kroger offered a cautious outlook for the current year, saying rising fuel costs are likely to take a bite out of household budgets.

Thanks to the Internet, a lot of what passes for news these days is a report based on a report based on a report with few if any filters in place to verify the accuracy of information. With that qualification in mind, Bloomberg this week reported that Walmart’s market share in China declined to 7.5% in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to 8.2% in the second quarter. The news agency said its report was based on a report in the English language Shanghai Daily newspaper whose report was based on a report from a market research company identified as CTR.

NEW YORK -- Sales at Macy’s, JCPenney and Kohl’s surpassed analysts’ estimates in February amid gradually moderating temperatures and rising consumer confidence. However, analysts warned that a late Easter and rising gasoline prices could impact sales going forward.

Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in February to the highest level in three years, according to a Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan index, as a drop in unemployment helped overcome concern over rising food and fuel costs.