Personal Income and Outlays, August 2017

Historical release narrative reproduced from the official public-domain U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis source. Statistical tables, charts, standard technical appendices and administrative material are omitted; formatting is adapted for reading. Figures retain the release's original vintage and may have been revised. Consult the linked source for the complete release and current data.

Personal income increased $28.6 billion (0.2 percent) in August according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $14.9 billion (0.1 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $18.0 billion (0.1 percent).

Real DPI decreased 0.1 percent in August and Real PCE decreased 0.1 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.2 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent.

The increase in personal income in August primarily reflected an increase in government social benefits to persons and compensation of employees (table 3).

Real PCE spending in August decreased $8.4 billion due to a decrease of $20.2 billion in spending for goods that was partially offset by a $9.2 billion increase in spending for services (table 7). Within goods, spending on new motor vehicles was the leading contributor to the decrease. Within services, healthcare spending was a leading contributor to the increase. Detailed information on monthly real PCE spending can be found on Table 2.3.6U.

Personal outlays increased $16.8 billion in August (table 3). Personal saving was $522.9 billion in August and the personal saving rate, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income, was 3.6 percent (table 1).

Updates

Estimates have been updated for April through July. The change from the preceding month for current-dollar personal income and for current-dollar and chained (2009) dollar DPI and PCE -- revised and previously published -- are shown below for June and July.

Hurricane Harvey

The August estimates of personal income and outlays reflect the effects of Hurricane Harvey that made landfall in southeastern Texas on August 25th. BEA cannot separately quantify the total impact of the storm on personal income and outlays because most of the source data used to estimate the components of personal income and outlays do not separately identify storm impacts. BEA made adjustments to estimates where source data were not yet available or did not fully reflect the effects of the storm.