American consumer spending has increased by its smallest margin since January this year. The cause of this it is suspected to be slowing job growth and economic uncertainty overseas. Personal spending increased by only .1% in September. The personal savings rate did however increase from 4.7% to 4.8%.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-consumer-spending-rises-0-1-in-september-1446208382
4 comments:
I'll be interested to see how spending over the holidays will be. That will be very telling for the economy. I've already seen commercials for holiday shopping, so stores are trying to tap into the market quite quickly, and this is probably why. I think it's a good sign that the personal savings rate increased, because that could provide for more spending during the holidays.
Holidays are coming, people might save for holiday shopping. so it is reasonable that consumer spending has increased slowly. Since savings rate also increased, i will be interesting to see whether consumer spending will increase a lot by the end of this year.
I agree with Ying. I don't think it is a coincidence that savings has gone up and spending has gone down right before the Holidays. I think November and December spending will be a true tell-tail about how our economy is doing. There is an expected boom for the Holiday season so it will be interesting if it plays out that way or not.
I agree with all of the above comments. It has been historically proven that consumers splurge during holiday season and save in the months leading up to the holidays. Especially the months before November and December, consumers are conscious of future spending they will be doing and go into saving mode for the time being. Then, the following months are the craziest times for spending, especially seen by retailers. Furthermore, by the time the end of November rolls around, we will see how this holiday season compares to past ones.
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