(Bloomberg) — Confidence among U.S. consumers unexpectedly dropped in January as gasoline prices picked up and more Americans said jobs were hard to get.

The Conference Board’s confidence index fell to 61.1 from a revised 64.8 reading in the prior month, figures from the New York-based private research group showed today. The median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a rise to 68. The figure was lower than the most pessimistic projection.

Job growth has fallen short of the pace required to drive bigger gains in wages, at the same time higher fuel costs threaten to strain household budgets and limit spending. The report showed fewer Americans expect their incomes to increase in the next six months, and they pared plans to purchase cars and homes.

Sentiment data indicate “just how fragile households believe the economic expansion is,” Steven Wood, president of Insight Economics LLC in Danville, California, said before the report. It is “largely the result of ongoing weakness in the labor and housing markets as well as the political bickering in Washington and on the campaign trail.”