According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Personal income increased $81.6 billion (0.4 percent at a monthly rate) in November. Disposable personal income (DPI)—personal income less personal current taxes—increased $71.9 billion (0.4 percent). Personal outlays—the sum of personal consumption expenditures (PCE), personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments—increased $47.8 billion (0.2 percent) and consumer spending increased $46.7 billion (0.2 percent). Personal saving was $839.8 billion and the personal saving rate—personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income—was 4.1 percent in November.”
In November 2022 American consumers spent 15,150 billion inflation-adjusted dollars. Last month we spent spent 15,558 billion dollars (see chart below). This is probably about $500 billion more than where pre-pandemic patterns would have brought us. But our rate of change has been coherent with pre-pandemic performance since about October 2021. In any case, healthy, sustainable pull for most push categories — including Food-at-Home as shown below with the red line.
