August 26, 2022
Personal consumption expenditures rose by a smaller than expected 0.1% in July after climbing by a larger-than-expected 1.0% in June. In the past year nominal consumer spending has risen by 8.7% While there are always monthly wiggles, the consumer is still willing to spend despite lots of worries about inflation and the pace of Fed tightening.
What we are really interested in is “real” or inflation-adjusted spending. That is what goes into the GDP calculation. After adjusting for inflation real consumption spending rose 0.2% in July after having been unchanged in June. In the past year real spending has risen 2.2%. Not bad, The consumer’s willingness to spend is intact, but his or her purchasing power is being eroded by inflation.
Personal income rose 0.2% in July after having jumped 0.7% in June and 0.6% in May. Over the past year personal income has risen 4.6%. The recent gains in income are being driven by the wage component which reflects continued growth in employment combined with rising hourly wages. The wage component of income has risen 0.6% in May, June, and July. Fueled by steady job gains wages and worker pressure to raise wages given that average hourly earnings in real terms have been falling, wages have risen 9.6% in the past year.
But real disposable income — what is left after paying taxes and adjusted for inflation — has been declining steadily since this time last year as inflation more than offset the increase in wages. In July real disposable income rose 0.3% after having declined 0.2% in June. In the past year this series has fallen 3.7%. Falling real earnings are causing workers and unions to push for higher wages to compensate. Thus, we expect wage growth to continue to grow rapidly. Real disposable income may stop falling in the second half of the year if workers are able to secure larger wages at the same time that inflation moderates slightly.
The savings rate was steady at 5.0% in July which is below its long-term average of 7.0%. Consumers are able to save less of their paycheck each month than what they have historically. But they are still saving.
Given the revisions to data for throughout the first half of the year, we expect positive GDP growth rate of about 2.0% in the second half of the year which would counter the GDP declines registered in the first two quarters. We look for 0.3% GDP growth in 2022.
Stephen Slifer
NumberNomics
Charleston, SC
Excellent analysis and charts. I am amazed home high consumer confidence remains with all the talk of recession in the media. I just added your site to my sites list of recommended economic links.
I think consumer confidence is based to a large degree on what is happening to the stock market. We all read the stuff that is published in the print media, magazine articles, blogs, tweets, etc. But perhaps there is so much information out that that we get ourselves confused and go back to how all that is affecting the stock market. If we as consumers were seeing obvious signs of prices rising because of the tariffs being applied to Chinese goods perhaps we would be less confident. That may be coming, but we are not there yet.
All the best.
Steve