Consumer confidence jumps in May to 2011 high

Pedestrians walk along Oxford Street as the shops open for the Boxing Day sales, in central London, December 26, 2010.

LONDON (Reuters) - Consumer morale jumped the most in 18 years in May, helped by unusually warm spring weather and a run of public holidays, a survey showed on Friday.

The GfK NOP May consumer confidence barometer jumped to -21 from April's two-year low of -31, surprising economists who had forecast an unchanged reading.

The 10 point improvement was the sharpest since May 1993 and only the second biggest since the survey began in 1974. It lifted the index to its highest level since December.

The improvement was broad-based, with rises registered across all five categories.

However, Nick Moon, managing director of GfK NOP social research, cautioned against reading too much into one month's figure and said it was too early to say whether it was the start of an upward trend.

"We are improving from a rock bottom position and consumer confidence is still deeply in the negative," he said.

"Whether the current spring in consumers' step is due to the feel-good factor of the royal wedding and a double-whammy of sunny bank holidays, or to the recent let-up in negative reporting about the state of the economy, we are not out of the woods."

GfK NOP carries out the survey on behalf of the European Commission.

(Reporting by Christina Fincher; Editing by Hugh Lawson)