News Release

FOR WIRE TRANSMISSION: 3:15 P.M., EDT, THURSDAY, JULY 5, 2001
BEA N/A

Errata issued July 5, 2001



Tables 2-5 are available in an XLS spreadsheet and in Plain Text format.
Many of the tables in our news releases are very wide. Printing tips are available.


 

 


 

Due to a computational error, the May 2001 current-dollar estimate of personal consumption expenditures (PCE) in BEA’s July 2, 2001, personal income and outlays’s news release was overstated by $12.3 billion dollars. The error was in PCE goods, specifically, estimates of consumer purchases of light trucks. PCE, which was originally estimated to have increased 0.5 percent in May, is now estimated to have increased 0.3 percent. Real PCE – PCE adjusted to remove price changes – which was originally estimated to have increased 0.3 percent in May, is now estimated to have increased 0.2 percent. The personal saving rate -- personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income -- for May, previously estimated at a negative 1.3 percent, is now estimated at a negative 1.1 percent.

The 0.2-percentage point correction to the estimate of the increase in current-dollar PCE for May is equal to the average revision from the first estimate to the second estimate of monthly PCE, without regard to sign, from 1990 to 2000. On July 31, revised estimates for personal income and PCE from January 1998 to May 2001 will be released, along with preliminary estimates for June 2001; these revised estimates will incorporate newly available source data and changes in methodology.

Corrected versions of news release tables 2 through 5 accompany this notice.

BEA regrets any inconvenience caused to data users by this error.

Contact: Carol Moylan (202) 606-9715
FAX (202) 606-532