- by New Deal democrat
Let me finish catching up this week with a quick look at personal income and spending, which were reported on Wednesday.
The “big” takeaway I’ve seen elsewhere is that inflation picked up, and maybe will complicate the Fed’s task. But I don’t see where it’s such a big deal. The price index increased 0.2% for the month, mainly on the back of a 0.4% increase for services, while the price index for goods declined -0.1%:
As you can see, while that’s an acceleration from a few months ago, it’s hardly out of line for the past two years. And the YoY% increase to 2.3% was tied with August’s rate for the lowest since the pandemic (blue in the graph below):
As you can see, goods inflation as measured by the index is still somnolent; it is inflation for the services component which remains somewhat “hot” compared with before the pandemic.
The bottom line is, this was only a one month increase. If the trend continues to increase for another month or two, I’ll be more concerned, but for now this could easily just be noise.
Otherwise, the news remained all good. Both real personal income and real personal spending increased for the month, by 0.4% and 0.1% respectively, to new highs:
The personal savings rate also increased slightly to 4.1%, also a positive thing:
The important coincident indicator of real personal income less government transfers also increased:
As did real manufacturing and trade sales for September:
So the bottom line is that all of the important metrics were positive, and I don’t see any cause for concern yet about any sustained pick-up in inflation.
