by Calculated Risk on 1/29/2021 08:39:00 AM

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

Personal income increased $116.6 billion (0.6 percent) in December according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $111.6 billion (0.6 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) decreased $27.9 billion (0.2 percent).

Real DPI increased 0.2 percent in December and Real PCE decreased 0.6 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.3 percent .

The increase in personal income was above expectations,  and the decrease in PCE was also above expectations

The December PCE price index increased 1.3 percent year-over-year and the December PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 1.5 percent year-over-year.

The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) since January 2019 through December 2020 (2012 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the change.

Click on graph for larger image.

The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE.