US Personal Incomes Grow At Fastest Pace Since 2018, Spending Growth Slows

Amid all the carnage, a sliver of good news is that incomes jumped more than expected in January (+0.6% MoM vs +0.4% MoM) and while economists will be gravely disappointed spending rose less than expected (+0.2% MoM vs +0.3% MoM) prompting a healthy rise in the savings rate from 7.5% to 7.9%…

This is the biggest jump in incomes since Dec 2018 and spending growth was the weakest since Feb 2019…

Source: Bloomberg

On a year-over-year basis, December saw a big surge (due to Dec 2018’s stocks-market-plunge-driven collapse in spending) and January saw that give back some as incomes grew at 4.0% YoY…

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, the picture was mixed with private workers wage growth slowing compared to rising government worker wage growth…

Finally, we note that The Fed’s favored inflation indicator – PCE Core Deflator – rose to +1.63% YoY (though less than expected)…

Source: Bloomberg

Of course, all of this data is ‘old’ and hit before the impacts of Covid-19 really started.