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American consumers slowed their spending to a gain of just 0.6 percent in September, a cautionary sign for an economy that remains in the grip of a pandemic and a prolonged bout of high inflation.
At the same time, a key inflation barometer that’s closely followed by the Federal Reserve surged 4.4 percent last month from a year earlier — the fastest such increase in three decades.
And wages, a key component of inflation, jumped 0.8 percent — twice the August gain and a reflection of the growing ability of workers to compel higher pay from companies that are desperate to fill a near-record number of available jobs.
A separate report Friday showed that wages jumped 1.5 percent in the three months that ended in September, the most on records dating back 20 years.
Sharply rising prices, in part a result of supply shortages, have imposed a growing burden on American households. For months, annual inflation has remained far above the modest annual rates of 2 percent or less that prevailed before the pandemic recession.
Overall, Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed that personal incomes, which provide the fuel for spending, fell 1 percent in September, the sharpest decline in four months. That occurred because the sizable gain in wages was more than offset by the category of income that includes government benefits: It plunged 7 percent, reflecting the expiration of emergency federal programs, including expanded unemployment benefits.
The economy, while growing, is still being hampered by COVID-19 cases and persistent supply shortages. On Thursday, the government estimated that the economy slowed sharply to a 2 percent annual growth rate in the July-September period, the weakest quarterly expansion since the recovery from the pandemic recession began last year.
For the July-September quarter as a whole, consumer spending, which fuels about 70 percent of overall economic activity, weakened to an annual growth rate of just 1.6 percent. That was down significantly from the previous quarter.
Economists remain hopeful for a bounce-back in the current quarter, with confirmed COVID cases declining, vaccination rates rising, businesses investing and more Americans venturing out to spend money. Many analysts think the economy will rebound at a solid annual growth rate of at least 4 percent this quarter.
Workers have gained the upper hand in the job market for the first time in at least two decades, and they are commanding higher pay, better benefits and other perks like flexible work hours. With more jobs available than there are unemployed people, government data shows, businesses have been forced to work harder to attract employees.
Higher inflation is eating away at some of the wage increases, but in recent months overall pay has kept up with rising prices. The 1.5 percent increase in wages and salaries in the third quarter stayed ahead of the 1.2 percent increase in inflation during that period, economists said.
In Friday’s report on consumer spending, the government said that last month’s 0.6 percent increase marked a slowdown from the 1 percent gain in August. Purchases of goods slowed to a 0.5 percent rise in September, compared with a 1.6 percent increase in August. More Americans have been shifting their spending away from the physical goods that many purchased while hunkered down at home to spending on services, from haircuts to airline tickets to restaurant meals. In some cases, a shortage of products, related to bottlenecked supply chains, are keeping a lid on goods purchases.
The 12-month increase of 4.4 percent in a price gauge preferred by the Fed, the largest such rise since early 1991, reflected a continuation of the inflation pressures that have intensified in recent months. So-called core inflation, which excludes volatile energy and food costs, rose by a slightly milder 3.6 percent over the past year.
Most economists expect consumer spending to strengthen as supply problems ease. The resilience of such spending has fueled businesses’ need for workers, and in many cases they can’t find enough. In September, employers added just 194,000 jobs, a second straight tepid gain and a sign that the pandemic still had a grip on the economy with many companies struggling to attract applicants to fill jobs. Many people who lost jobs in the pandemic have yet to start looking again.
Lydia Boussour, lead US economist at Oxford Economics, said she thinks that consumer spending, which slowed to an annual growth rate of just 1.6 percent in the July-September period, is rebounding in the current quarter.
“An improving health situation, rising mobility, improving employment trends and solid household finances,” Boussour wrote, should help fuel a consumer spending increase of around 5 percent this quarter.
The report Friday showed that the saving rate dipped to 7.5 percent of after-tax income in September, a still-high level but down from 9.2 percent in August.
