Consumer spending increased 0.4% from last month, in actual dollars and also when adjusted for inflation. Personal consumption expenditures are often called consumer spending by the press. Real Personal Consumption Expenditures, or PCE, are about 71% of GDP. Graphed below is the monthly change in consumer spending.

 

 

Personal income, disposable income increased by 0.3% and even when adjusted for inflation disposable income increased 0.3%. Below are the monthly changes for real personal income (bright red), real disposable income (maroon) and real consumer spending (blue).

 

 

Below are the raw PCE totals, in adjusted for inflation dollars.

 

 

Consumer spending encompasses things like housing, health care, food and gas in addition to cars and smartphones. In other words, most of PCE is about paying for basic living necessities. Graphed below is the overall real PCE monthly percentage change.

 

 

What people spent money on, adjusted for prices, or in real dollars, by monthly percentage change was:

• durable goods: +1.1%
• non-durable goods: +0.5%
• services: +0.3%

Health care, for example, is a service. Gasoline is a nondurable good. Cars are a durable good. Additionally when people are cutting back, durable goods are usually the first things to go, especially large ticket items.

Price indexes are used as divisors to adjust for inflation and price changes. The indexes are used to compute spending and income for an apples to apples, real dollar comparison to previous months and years. Economic statisticians use real dollars so one does not erroneously assume economic growth when it's really inflation.

The PCE price index is used to remove inflation from consumer spending and income, reported above. The price index did not increase, for July, but is up +1.3% from a year ago. Minus energy and food, the price index also did not increase and is up +1.6% from this time last year. The energy index for personal consumption dropped -0.3% for July and has declined -4.7% from one year ago. The food price index had no change for the month, but is up 2.0% for the year. Who finds this hard to believe with the drought causing prices to soar? While the PCE price index represents inflation, it is different from CPI.

While personal income increased +0.4%, these numbers are the total for everybody in the United States who is reported and not part of the underground economy. Below is personal income, not adjusted for inflation, or price changes.

 

 

Real personal income, or personal income adjusted for inflation, via the PCE price index, and also government payments, such as social security, are removed, was up +0.3% as well. Below is the graph of real personal income. Personal income is just catching up with levels, on aggregate, from before the recession.

 

 

Why the BEA report doesn't give real personal income monthly changes including transfer receipts, instead of excluding them, I do not know. Below is the monthly percentage change in personal income, adjusted for inflation, excluding payments from the government.

 

 

Disposable income is what is left over after taxes. DPI (disposable income), increased 0.3% from last month although the increase might be due to less taxes.

Personal current taxes increased $2.4 billion in July, compared with an increase of $8.8 billion in June.

DPI adjusted for inflation (see the price indexes above), increased 0.3%, from the previous month. These numbers are aggregates, which includes income of the uber-rich, or the 1% of the population, as they are now called.

 

 

Below is real disposable income per capita. Per capita means evenly distributed per person and population increases every month. July mid-month the U.S. population was 314,378,000, in increase of 210,000 from last month. In other words, while on aggregate personal income has increased, so has population to earn that income. When taking increased population into account, we basically have no growth in real personal income.

 

 

Politically it seems, any mention of the effects of population on aggregate data is a no no and dismissed. Disposable income, when spread across increased population growth and adjusted for inflation shows it's often worse news, which makes declines even more miserable. The numbers reported in the press headlines are aggregates, or the total, regardless of how many more people are in the country.

The monthly percentage change for wages and salaries was +0.2% as was total compensation, which includes wages, salaries. Landlords just keep making out like bandits, rental income increased 1.0% in a month and proprietor's total income, with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments, increased 0.5%. Personal receipts, income on assets, increased by 0.2%. This is income from non-incorporated businesses, such as the self-employed. Dividend income increased 1.1% for the month, interest income, -0.5%.

Private wage and salary disbursements increased $16.1 billion in July, compared with an increase of $28.5 billion in June. Goods-producing industries' payrolls increased $5.5 billion, compared with an increase of $7.1 billion; manufacturing payrolls increased $3.6 billion, compared with an increase of $4.9 billion. Services-producing industries' payrolls increased $10.6 billion, compared with an increase of $21.4 billion. Government wage and salary disbursements increased $0.3 billion, compared with an increase of $0.5 billion.

Below are wages and salaries for the past decade. Notice the dip and the more flat line than earlier in the decade. Bear in mind these are aggregate, or all wages and salaries, and not adjusted for inflation.

 

 

Below is personal income minus personal current transfer receipts. This graph shows how much personal income increased that wasn't funded by the government and is used as a recession indicator. Transfer receipts are payments from the government to individuals where no actual services (work) was performed. This includes social security, unemployment insurance, welfare, veterans benefits, Medicaid, Medicare and so on. Transfer receipts monthly change was +0.4%, not adjusted for inflation.

 

 

Personal current transfer receipts increased $10.3 billion in July, compared with an increase of $3.8 billion in June. Within current transfer receipts, government social benefits to persons for Medicare increased $6.9 billion, in contrast to a decrease of $0.2 billion.

Now recall how social security is projected to run out of money to the contributions to social security for this month from paychecks:

Contributions for government social insurance -- a subtraction in calculating personal income -- increased $2.5 billion in July, compared with an increase of $2.8 billion in June.

People need jobs, in order to pay into social security. Below is a graph of just transfer receipts.

 

 

Personal savings is disposable income minus outlays, or consumption and not adjusted for inflation. The Personal Savings Rate was 4.2% in July. June's personal savings rate was 4.3%.

 

 

Below is disposable personal income minus personal consumption expenditures monthly raw total changes.

 

 

Personal Outlays are PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments. PCE is defined above by percentages is almost all of personal outlays. Personal interest payments are things like the interest you pay on your credit card. Personal transfer payments are defined as:

Payments consisting of transfer payments by persons to government and to the rest of the world. Payments to government include donations, fees, and fines paid to Federal, state, and local governments, formerly classified as "personal nontax payments."

In other words, personal transfer payments are nothing more than that speeding ticket you just got or how you just donated to this site. People often confuse transfer payments with transfer receipts, not the same thing.

To visualize more data from this report, consider playing around with more of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Fred graphs.

Here is our overview from last month and here is the overview for Q2 2012 GDP.

This overview details the BEA Personal Income and Outlays statical release, which covers individual income, consumption and savings. The personal income & outlays report is annualized and seasonally adjusted, although most percentages are presented as monthly rates.