Those who are counting on the consumer to bounce back in a nice way in the near future got a pretty disappointing surprise today. The Conference Board reported today that the consumer confidence gauge plunged to 47.7 in the month October from 53.4 a month ago. Economists were expecting the index to stay at about 53, so clearly this wasn’t expected by Wall Street or the analysts. Breaking down it down even further, the current picture as shown by the present situation index fell to 20.7, the lowest level in 26 years.

What’s behind the big drop in consumer confidence? It’s pretty much all about the current job picture. Consumers who had started to become more encouraged in recent months seem to be saying “Where are the jobs?” Pointing out the weakness of the labor market is the number of people saying that jobs are hard to get is now at 49.6%, the highest level since May of 1983. The recent unemployment reports have shown a bit of a slowing in the cuts of jobs, but there has been no recovery at all in the employment market, and that seems to really be putting a damper on consumer sentiments.

The size of the drop in consumer confidence is what is so surprising about this report. It will be interesting to see if this is a trend or an aberration. The truth is, until consumers start to have some confidence about their own job and the labor market overall it will be hard for this economy to get into a prolonged recovery. The good news is, often the labor market is the last thing to turn, so there is still a possibility that it could happen. Let’s hope the labor market starts to get things going, because the consumer accounts for 70% of the U.S. GDP and right now they aren’t feeling very good about the situation.