The drop in spending at Christmas shopping season also indicates a worried consumer. However, we did not have January’s spending numbers to see if that continued, which would put Q1 2019 growth in question. Instead, all we had was the January income reports. And what goes up due to one-time factors must go down.
Personal income decreased $23.8 billion (-0.1 percent) in January. Disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $35.1 billion (-0.2 percent); Real DPI is unavailable for January.
The decrease in personal income in January primarily reflected decreases in personal dividend income, farm proprietors’ income.
Now, it wasnt all bad for January incomes, as wages and salaries were still up a decent 0.3%. But that overall drop makes the February and March reports very big, in seeing whether the overall incone decline or wage increase is the accurate predictor for Q1 2019 growthm.
Via Jake’s Wisconsin Funhouse: The shutdown slowed down news indicating a slowing economy