Personal Income and Outlays, November 2017

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Bureau of Economic Analysis
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PERSONAL INCOME AND OUTLAYS, NOVEMBER 2017

Personal income increased $54.0 billion (0.3 percent) in November according to estimates released today by the
Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $50.9 billion (0.4 percent) and personal
consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $87.1 billion (0.6 percent).

Real DPI increased 0.1 percent in November and Real PCE increased 0.4 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.2 percent.
Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent.

                                                                2017
                                                July     Aug.     Sept.     Oct.     Nov.
Percent change from preceding month
Personal income:
 Current dollars                                 0.3     0.2       0.5      0.4      0.3
Disposable personal income:
 Current dollars                                 0.2     0.1       0.4      0.4      0.4
 Chained (2009) dollars                          0.1    -0.1       0.0      0.3      0.1
Personal consumption expenditures (PCE):
 Current dollars                                 0.3     0.2       1.0      0.2      0.6
 Chained (2009) dollars                          0.2     0.0       0.6      0.0      0.4
Price indexes:
 PCE                                             0.1     0.2       0.4      0.1      0.2
 PCE, excluding food and energy                  0.1     0.1       0.2      0.2      0.1

Price indexes:                                   Percent change from month one year ago
 PCE                                             1.4     1.4       1.7      1.6      1.8
 PCE, excluding food and energy                  1.4     1.3       1.4      1.4      1.5

The increase in personal income in November primarily reflected increases in wages and salaries and personal interest income (table 3).

The $49.1 billion increase in real PCE in November reflected an increase of $22.3 billion in spending for goods and a $27.6 billion
increase in spending for services (table 7). Within goods, recreational goods and vehicles was the leading contributor to the increase.
Within services, the largest contributor to the increase was spending for electricity and gas. Detailed information on monthly real
PCE spending can be found in Table 2.3.6U.

Personal outlays increased $91.7 billion in November (table 3). Personal saving was $426.2 billion in November and the personal saving
rate, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income, was 2.9 percent (table 1).

                                Updates to Personal Income and Outlays

Estimates have been updated for July through October. The percent change from the preceding month for current-dollar personal income,
and for current-dollar and chained (2009) dollar DPI and PCE -- revised and as published in last month's release -- are shown below.

                                                        Change from preceding month
                                               September                                  October
                                Previous   Revised   Previous   Revised   Previous   Revised   Previous   Revised
                               (Billions of dollars)      (Percent)      (Billions of dollars)      (Percent)
Personal income:
 Current dollars                    69.1      77.6        0.4       0.5       65.1      59.5        0.4       0.4
Disposable personal income:
 Current dollars                    54.8      63.3        0.4       0.4       66.1      60.9        0.5       0.4
 Chained (2009) dollars             -1.9       5.4        0.0       0.0       39.9      35.1        0.3       0.3
Personal consumption expenditures:
 Current dollars                   119.2     132.7        0.9       1.0       34.4      23.2        0.3       0.2
 Chained (2009) dollars             58.5      70.3        0.5       0.6       13.1       3.0        0.1       0.0

BOX.____________________________
                                Hurricanes Harvey and Irma

The recent estimates of personal income and outlays reflect the effects of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. BEA cannot separately
quantify the total impact of the storms on personal income and outlays because most of the source data used to estimate the
components of personal income and outlays do not separately identify storm impacts. BEA made adjustments to estimates where source data
were not yet available or did not fully reflect the effects of the storms.

For more information on the treatment of disasters within the national income and product accounts, see
“How are the measures of production and income in the national accounts affected by a natural or man-made disaster?”
________________________________

Personal Income and Outlays Release Dates for 2018

December 2017....January 29             April 2018....May 31            August 2018......September 28
January 2018.....March 1                May 2018......June 29           September 2018...October 29
February 2018....March 29               June 2018.....July 31           October 2018.....November 29
March 2018.......April 30               July 2018.....August 30         November 2018....December 21

                                Next release:  January 29, 2018 at 8:30 A.M. EST
                                   Personal Income and Outlays: December 2017

                                       Additional Information

Resources

Additional Resources available at www.bea.gov:

•	Stay informed about BEA developments by reading the BEA blog, signing up for BEA’s email
        subscription service, or following BEA on Twitter @BEA_News.
•	Historical time series for these estimates can be accessed in BEA’s Interactive Data Application.
•	Access BEA data by registering for BEA’s Data Application Programming Interface (API).
•	For more on BEA’s statistics, see our monthly online journal, the Survey of Current Business.
•	BEA's news release schedule
•	NIPA Handbook:  Concepts and Methods of the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts


Definitions

Personal income is the income received by, or on behalf of, all persons from all sources:  from
participation as laborers in production, from owning a home or business, from the ownership of
financial assets, and from government and business in the form of transfers. It includes income from
domestic sources as well as the rest of world. It does not include realized or unrealized capital gains or
losses.

Disposable personal income is the income available to persons for spending or saving. It is equal to
personal income less personal current taxes.

Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) is the value of the goods and services purchased by, or on the
behalf of, “persons” who reside in the United States.

Personal outlays is the sum of PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments.

Personal saving is personal income less personal outlays and personal current taxes.

The personal saving rate is personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income.

Current-dollar estimates are valued in the prices of the period when the transactions occurred—that is,
at “market value.” Also referred to as “nominal estimates” or as “current-price estimates.”

Real values are inflation-adjusted estimates—that is, estimates that exclude the effects of price changes.

For more definitions, see the Glossary: National Income and Product Accounts.


Statistical conventions

Annual rates. Monthly and quarterly values are expressed at seasonally-adjusted annual rates (SAAR).
Dollar changes are calculated as the difference between these SAAR values. For detail, see the FAQ
“Why does BEA publish estimates at annual rates?”

Month-to-month percent changes are calculated from unrounded data and are not annualized.

Quarter-to-quarter percent changes are calculated from unrounded data and are displayed at annual
rates. For detail, see the FAQ “How is average annual growth calculated?”

Quantities and prices. Quantities, or “real” volume measures, and prices are expressed as index
numbers with a specified reference year equal to 100 (currently 2009). Quantity and price indexes are
calculated using a Fisher-chained weighted formula that incorporates weights from two adjacent
periods (quarters for quarterly data and annuals for annual data). “Real” dollar series are calculated by
multiplying the published quantity index by the current dollar value in the reference year (2009) and
then dividing by 100. Percent changes calculated from real quantity indexes and chained-dollar levels
are conceptually the same; any differences are due to rounding.

Chained-dollar values are not additive because the relative weights for a given period differ from those
of the reference year.