News Release
Personal Income and Outlays, April 2018
Personal income increased $49.5 billion (0.3 percent) in April according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $60.9 billion (0.4 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $79.8 billion (0.6 percent).
Real DPI increased 0.2 percent in April and Real PCE increased 0.4 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.2 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2 percent.
| 2017 | 2018 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec. | Jan. | Feb. | Mar. | Apr. | |
| Percent change from preceding month | |||||
| Personal income: | |||||
| Current dollars | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.3 |
| Disposable personal income: | |||||
| Current dollars | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.4 |
| Chained (2009) dollars | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Personal consumption expenditures (PCE): | |||||
| Current dollars | 0.5 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.6 |
| Chained (2009) dollars | 0.3 | -0.2 | -0.1 | 0.5 | 0.4 |
| Price indexes: | |||||
| PCE | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.2 |
| PCE, excluding food and energy | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Price indexes: | Percent change from month one year ago | ||||
| PCE | 1.7 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 |
| PCE, excluding food and energy | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.8 | 1.8 |
The increase in personal income in April primarily reflected increases in wages and salaries, in personal interest income, and in government social benefit payments to persons, specifically veteran's benefits and Medicare (table 3).
The $42.8 billion increase in real PCE in April reflected an increase of $15.4 billion in spending for goods and a $27.5 billion increase in spending for services (table 7). Within goods, spending for gasoline and other energy goods was a 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 in Table 2.3.6U.
Personal outlays increased $86.9 billion in April (table 3). Personal saving was $419.6 billion in April and the personal saving rate, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income, was 2.8 percent (table 1).
Updates to Personal Income and Outlays
Estimates have been revised for October through March. The percent change from the preceding month for current-dollar personal income, and for current-dollar and chained (2009) dollar DPI and PCE -- revised and as published in last month's release -- are shown below.
| Change from preceeding month | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| February | March | |||||||
| Previous | Revised | Previous | Revised | Previous | Revised | Previous | Revised | |
| (Billions of dollars) | (Percent) | (Billions of dollars) | (Percent) | |||||
| Personal income: | ||||||||
| Current dollars | 57.1 | 54.1 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 47.8 | 40.7 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Disposable Personal income: | ||||||||
| Current dollars | 42.6 | 41.9 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 47.8 | 40.7 | 0.3 | 0.2 |
| Chained (2009) dollars | 15.9 | 18.5 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 30.5 | 25.3 | 0.2 | 0.2 |
| Personal consumption expenditures: | ||||||||
| Current dollars | 1.6 | 5.9 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 61.7 | 73.9 | 0.4 | 0.4 |
| Chained (2009) dollars | -18.6 | -11.8 | -0.2 | -0.1 | 50.0 | 60.5 | 0.4 | 0.5 |
Next release: June 29, 2018 at 8:30 A.M. EDT
Personal Income and Outlays: May 2018