Personal Income increased 0.5% in March; Spending increased 1.1%

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by Calculated Risk on 4/29/2022 08:38:00 AM

The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for March:

Personal income increased $107.2 billion (0.5 percent) in March, according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $89.7 billion (0.5 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $185.0 billion (1.1 percent).

Real DPI decreased 0.4 percent in March and Real PCE increased 0.2 percent; goods decreased 0.5 percent and services increased 0.6 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.9 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.3 percent
emphasis added

The March PCE price index increased 6.6 percent year-over-year and the PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 5.2 percent year-over-year.

The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through March 2022 (2012 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn’t start at zero to better show the change.

Click on graph for larger image.

The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.

Personal income was slightly above expectations, and the increase in PCE was above expectations.