Consumer Spending

U.S. personal incomes rose at their fastest rate in more than five years, and consumer spending accelerated, setting the stage for a fine holiday shopping season and, possibly, for yet another Federal Reserve Board interest-rate increase.Incomes rose 1.3 percent in October to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $7.941 trillion after holding steady in September, the largest rise since a like-sized increase in April 1994, the Commerce Department announced yesterday.Last month's growth derived some of its strength from emergency subsidies to farmers, and still more from bonuses paid to unionized auto and aerospace workers as part of contract settlements.

Maryland employers slashed 6,200 jobs in April, cutting short a string of gains, the U.S. Department of Labor said Friday, as the state began feeling the pinch of federal budget sequestration and cutbacks in consumer spending. But the government's separate survey of households showed that Maryland's unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 percent in April from 6.6 percent a month earlier. The surveys of jobs and residents don't always move together, in part because Marylanders commuting across state lines or starting businesses don't affect the count of jobs.

Consumers spent modestly last month, a sign that the economic recovery is proceeding at a decent - but not spectacular - pace. The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumers boosted their spending by 0.3 percent in February. That was a tad slower than the 0.4 percent increase registered in January and marked the smallest increase since September. Still, the increase in spending was considered a respectable showing, especially given the snowstorms that slammed the East Coast and kept some people away from the malls.

Customers lined up outside Rheb's Candy early Monday, even before owner Wynn Harger opened the doors of the Southwest Baltimore shop his family has run for three generations. People, mostly men, crammed into the tiny, cottage-like store for much of the morning for one purpose - securing the handmade chocolates for Valentine's Day. "It's what my wife wants," said Dennis Eder, who traveled from Dundalk to Rheb's on Wilkens Avenue to purchase a two-pound box of assorted chocolates for his wife, Isabel.

Billy Belford, a nurse's aide in Portland, Ore., has big plans for 1995. Feeling "pretty secure" about his job, Belford, 22, is ready to spend some money."

The Alex. Brown & Sons annual Consumer Growth Stock Seminar hardly seems a hotbed of liberal Democrats, but two-thirds of the institutional investors attending this year's conference think President-elect Bill Clinton will help stimulate consumer spending next year.That result came as part of a survey released yesterday by Alex. Brown, which asked nearly 200 investment professionals who took part in the two-day annual conference about their outlook for the consumer economy.The informal survey found broad optimism among investors about prospects for the holiday shopping season and next year's consumer spending.

WASHINGTON -- American consumers are on a late-year spending binge that may produce headaches in 1995, according to economic reports released yesterday.Despite a slight drop in personal income last month, consumer spending climbed briskly again in November, rising six-tenths of 1 percent and embracing a wide variety of goods and services, the Commerce Department reported.Indeed, it is possible, economists say, that overextended householders could cause the economy to slow more than policy-makers at the Federal Reserve desire and stir fears of recession.

WASHINGTON - Economists scaled back forecasts of economic growth for a second-straight month as expectations waned for a rebound in consumer spending and inventory building, the latest Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey found yesterday. The economy will probably expand 2.6 percent this year, down from the forecast of 2.7 percent that the survey found last month, according to the consensus of 54 economists. Gross domestic product grew 2.4 percent in 2002. The outlook "continued to deteriorate over the past month as surging energy prices, the likelihood of an imminent U.S. war with Iraq and severe winter weather caused many panel members to trim estimates of GDP in the first half of the year," this month's report said.

Tumbling gasoline prices gave consumers more purchasing power last month, which led to a rise in real consumer spending even as personal income slips and Americans worry about their jobs in a rapidly weakening economy. The Commerce Department reported yesterday that consumer spending, when adjusted for inflation, rose 0.6 percent in November, its largest gain in two years. The increase followed a 0.5 percent decline in October. And while the unadjusted rate of consumer spending declined 0.6 percent in November, on the heels of a 1 percent drop in October, economists suggested that the relative increase in spending was a rare piece of good news for the faltering economy.

WASHINGTON -- U.S. consumer prices rose in 1998 at their slowest pace in 12 years and retail sales surged in December, capping a year in which rising wages allowed consumer spending to increase at its fastest pace since 1984 and energized the economy's longest peacetime expansion.The consumer price index rose 1.6 percent last year, less than 1997's 1.7 percent increase and the lowest annual inflation rate since 1986, the Labor Department reported yesterday. In December, prices rose only 0.1 percent as declines in gasoline and home heating oil prices offset higher cigarette prices.

This shouldn't surprise you. The holiday shopping season was not gangbusters after all. With 13 million unemployed Americans and millions more working part-time or otherwise underemployed, the country has not returned to the mall in full force. It's not 2006 again, and it's certainly not 1999. The economic rebuilding from the 2008 financial crash is far from over. Consumers focused as much on saving in December as on spending, a Commerce Department report released Monday showed.

Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve seem to have run out of ammo. It's gridlock as usual for Congress. States and cities are cutting spending and shedding jobs. Is it time for the spender of last resort — the American consumer — to put a prop under the economy? Spending per shopper over the post-Thanksgiving weekend was set to pop by 9.1 percent compared with that of the same period last year, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation. Store traffic was up 6.6 percent, and the federation says average outlays per shopper were $399, up from $365 last year.

Consumers spent modestly last month, a sign that the economic recovery is proceeding at a decent - but not spectacular - pace. The Commerce Department reported Monday that consumers boosted their spending by 0.3 percent in February. That was a tad slower than the 0.4 percent increase registered in January and marked the smallest increase since September. Still, the increase in spending was considered a respectable showing, especially given the snowstorms that slammed the East Coast and kept some people away from the malls.

WASHINGTON - The economy is now likely expanding at just half the brisk 5.9 percent pace at which the government on Friday estimated it grew last quarter. Business spending will make up for some of a slowdown in consumer spending - but not likely enough to reduce the jobless rate much. In a fresh reading on the nation's economic standing, the Commerce Department bumped up its growth estimate for the final quarter of 2009, from a 5.7 percent growth rate estimated a month ago. It was the strongest showing in six years.

Consumers are expected to continue to spend cautiously this holiday season, with the National Retail Federation to announce today that it predicts a 1 percent decline in sales as people continue to worry about their jobs and the economy. This year will be the second-weakest holiday season since the federation began tracking sales more than 40 years ago, with sales coming in at $437.6 billion. Last year was the only other time the retail trade group has reported a decline in spending, with sales dropping 3.4 percent in November and December.

Would forgiving student loans be good for the economy? A campaign is under way to get student loans forgiven so grads can spend their money on other things. Proponents say this would stimulate the economy. Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Fin-Aid.org, crunched some numbers. Kantrowitz says there is $730 billion in outstanding student loans - $598 billion in federal loans, $132 billion in private loans. But to have an immediate impact on the economy, Kantrowitz notes, you have to consider only loans that are in repayment because that's money now going to loans and not other consumer spending.

EINSTEIN, it turns out, was wrong. There are two constants in the universe: the speed of light and the rising tide of dollars coming from the American consumer's wallet. Through booms, busts and disasters, for more than a decade, U.S. stores have booked successively higher sales. Today's eighth-graders have never known a day when the American shopper was not standing guard against the forces of recession and paid-off credit cards. The last time retail spending faltered, even for a few months, was the fourth quarter of 1991, when layoffs and consumer confidence got so bad that President George H.W. Bush had to admit that "many families are having a rough go of it," according to news reports.

The American wallet is tight but not closed shut. Last week's dismal report on gross domestic product contained the silver lining that consumer spending rose at a decent pace in the first quarter after crashing at the end of 2008. GDP fell at an annual rate of 6.1 percent, but consumer spending increased at a rate of 2.2 percent after plunging at a 4.3 percent pace in the fourth quarter. That's pretty impressive in a period when the stock market fell by a fourth before recovering somewhat.

WASHINGTON -U.S. retailers rang up their largest increase in sales in more than a year during January, rebounding strongly after a six-month string of sharp declines, the Commerce Department reported yesterday. Retail sales rose 1 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis last month, marking the first increase since June and the largest percentage increase since November 2007. The gain was unexpected, with economists surveyed by MarketWatch looking for a decline of 0.4 percent. But economists tempered their enthusiasm over the better-than-expected results, believing that the improvement might have been largely the result of problems seasonally adjusting the data after an especially horrid holiday sales season.