Personal Income and Outlays, September 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 $66.9 billion (0.4 percent) in September according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $53.0 billion (0.4 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $136.0 billion (1.0 percent).

Real DPI decreased less than 0.1 percent in September and Real PCE increased 0.6 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent.

The increase in personal income in September primarily reflected increases in wages and salaries and nonfarm proprietors’ income (table 3).

The $76.0 billion increase in real PCE in September reflected an increase of $59.1 billion in spending for goods and a $21.6 billion increase in spending for services (table 7). Within goods, new motor vehicles was the leading contributor to the increase. Within services, the largest contributor to the increase was spending for household utilities. Detailed information on monthly real PCE spending can be found on Table 2.3.6U.

Personal outlays increased $132.5 billion in September (table 3). Personal saving was $441.9 billion in September and the personal saving rate, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income, was 3.1 percent (table 1).

Updates

Estimates have been updated for July and August. 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 July and August.

Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

The August and September estimates of personal income and outlays reflect the effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. BEA cannot separately quantify the total impact of the storms 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 storms.