Largest monthly drop in Eurozone consumer confidence ever in March

There it is, the first look at March data for the eurozone and it's not looking pretty at all. But given the economic circumstances, this is hardly a surprise.

When February data was collected, Covid-19 was still a rather distant concern given its spread was mainly in China. But in March, this became a European problem too. Since then, the entire eurozone economy has experienced large fallout from the virus. The dropped confidence levels were last seen in November 2014 and are consistent with a large decline in consumption.

The decline in confidence, although dramatic, still doesn’t tell us much about the overall depth of the economic fallout

The decline in confidence, although dramatic, still doesn’t tell us much about the overall depth of the economic fallout. As the duration, the extent of the pandemic and the restrictive measures on activity across the eurozone are still hard to gauge, the ultimate impact on growth will not really become any clearer from March confidence surveys.