There were no surprises in today's Personal Income and Spending report [4]. At $14.188 trillion, Personal Income rose 0.4% in August, just as expected, and up from an upward revised 0.2% in July. On the spending side, US Personal Outlays were $11.94 trillion, an increase of 0.3% from July, and also higher than the upwardly revised July spending of 0.2%. The PCE Deflator came in at 0.1%, as expected, while the PCE Core rose 0.2% compared to expectations of 0.1% and up from 0.1% last month. The breakdown of components at both income and spending levels was uniformly distributed with nothing standing out. Real Disposable income rose 1.6% Y/Y but only due to a change in the current-dollar series as a result of an adjustment in the implicit price deflator which revised recent numbers to appear larger.
Finally, since in nominal terms incomes rose a fraction more than spending, the implied savings rate rose by the same fraction: 4.5% to 4.6%, the highest since May.
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