WASHINGTON – Personal income last month grew 1.0 percent, or $108.1 billion, after gaining 0.5 percent in December, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today. The bureau cited growth in bonus payments and stock-option gains, federal pay raises, and cost-of-living adjustments to several federal payment programs.
Personal consumption expenditures increased 0.5 percent, or $51.9 billion, after rising 0.7 percent in December. Real PCE grew 0.3 percent in January, after rising 0.4 percent the month before.
“The consumer is pulling more than its fair share of economic growth,” Ellen Zentner, an economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York, told Bloomberg News. “We can count on the consumer in 2007 to move the economy along, even in the face of slowing housing and a weak industrial sector.”
Last year, personal income increased 6.3 percent over the previous year’s level, after rising 5.2 percent in 2005, the BEA said. Growth in wages and salaries accounted for most of the change.
Personal spending rose 6.0 percent, lagging 2005’s 6.5 percent, and real PCE grew 3.2 percent after increasing 3.5 percent the year before.
Additional information is available at www.bea.gov.
