by Calculated Risk on 8/30/2012 09:02:00 AM

The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for July:

Personal income increased $42.3 billion, or 0.3 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $39.9 billion, or 0.3 percent, in July, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $46.0 billion, or 0.4 percent. In June, personal income increased $46.1 billion, or 0.3 percent, DPI increased $37.4 billion, or 0.3 percent, and PCE increased $3.5 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.
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Real PCE -- PCE adjusted to remove price changes -- increased 0.4 percent in July, in contrast to a decrease of 0.1 percent in June. ... The PCE price index increased less than 0.1 percent in July, compared to an increase of 0.1 percent in June. The PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased less than 0.1 percent, compared to an increase of 0.2 percent.
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Personal saving -- DPI less personal outlays -- was $506.3 billion in July, compared with $516.2 billion in June. The personal saving rate -- personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income -- was 4.2 percent in July, compared with 4.3 percent in June.

The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through July (2005 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the change.

Click on graph for larger image.

This graph shows real PCE by month for the last few years. The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.

A key point is the PCE price index has only increased 1.3% over the last year, and core PCE is up only 1.6%. The PCE price index - and core PCE - hardly increased in July.