WASHINGTON – Consumer confidence was up in February for the sixth straight month, according to a leading barometer, as a record number of people said they were aware of recent gains in the jobs market.

The optimism led to the highest number of consumers since 2004 saying they expected the unemployment rate to drop, according to data released Friday by the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers.

Overall consumer confidence continued to climb after bottoming out last summer amid the partisan debate in Washington over raising the debt ceiling and the subsequent downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. The group’s consumer sentiment index was 54.9 in August, the lowest since 1980. The index rose to 75.3 in February, up 0.4 percent from the previous month.