After months of rising unemployment and sinking profits, recession-weary businesses in South Florida may have forgotten what a confident consumer looks like.

They might want to take a look at the area's gay community.

Gay and lesbian consumers are more optimistic about the economy and about their financial futures than their heterosexual counterparts, according to a national survey conducted in August by Witeck-Combs/Harris Interactive.

``We've seen that here as well,'' said Steve Adkins, president of the Miami-Dade Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (MDGLCC). ``The [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender, or] GLBT market is still strong in South Florida.''

At the chamber's Expo South Florida at the Miami Beach Convention Center this Saturday, companies will try to woo GLBT consumers who, though not immune to the downturn, have remained relatively upbeat, thanks to fewer long-term financial obligations like children or college tuition funds and a lower unemployment rate than the overall population.

In Miami-Dade, the 123,000 adults who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender are responsible for an estimated $5.6 billion in consumer spending each year, roughly 6.8 percent of the county's overall purchasing power, Adkins said.

Best Buy, among those retailers exhibiting at the Expo, recently started doing focus studies of gay and lesbian customers at its Fort Lauderdale and Miami Beach locations to get a better sense of how to court the market, said Carlos Serrano, a customer solutions manager for the company.

``We found that the gay and lesbian community has a lot of expendable income,'' he said. ``And they're willing to spend the money on the right technology that fits their needs.''

With consumers across all sectors shying away from spending, the GLBT community may be one of the first groups to come out of its shell, said Wes Combs, president of Witeck-Combs, a public relations and marketing firm specializing in the gay market.

POLL'S FINDINGS

The Witeck-Combs/Harris Interactive poll found that 57 percent of gay and lesbian respondents said they expect the U.S. economy to get better in the next year, compared to 45 percent of heterosexuals. And 31 percent of GLBT adults said they expect their own household's financial situation to improve in the next six months, compared to 24 percent of heterosexuals. Only 16 percent of gay adults expected their finances to decline, compared with 32 percent of heterosexual adults.

One possible explanation for the positive outlook among gays is their unemployment picture isn't as gloomy as the general population's, Combs said. Compared to heterosexuals, gay and lesbian workers were twice as likely to say the job market in their region was ``pretty good.'' They are more likely to be concentrated in fields like education and healthcare, which have been less affected by the recession than manufacturing and construction, he said.

Since only about a quarter of GLBT households have children, gay job seekers tend to be freer to leave a weak job market or pursue an opportunity in another city.

And, with diapers, school supplies and college savings funds absent from most GLBT households' budgets, gay consumers usually have more discretionary income to spend on themselves, said Julian Cavazos, business development director for the Gay and Lesbian Business Exchange (GLBX), part of Fort Lauderdale's Chamber of Commerce.

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