This is a follow-up with a couple new charts to my post on Friday, Personal Spending Jumps More than Income in March
Income Minus Spending Chart Notes
- Real means after inflation. DPI means disposable Personal Income after taxes.
- Only twice in the last 10 months has growth in real income been greater than growth in real spending.
Personal Income Four Ways
Understanding Personal Income
- The difference between PI (red) and DPI (blue) is taxes, just over 3 trillion dollars annually.
- The difference between DPI (blue) and Real DPI (yellow) is inflation.
- The difference between Real DPI (yellow) and Real DPI Minus PCTR (green) is Personal Current Transfer Receipts
PCTR are government benefits that include Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security, and disability payments.
Personal Income and Real Hourly Wages
Percentage Increases in Income and Hourly Earnings
- DPI is up 25.2 percent since pre-pandemic
- Real DPI is up 6.6 percent since pre-pandemic
- Real Average Hourly Earnings are up 0.9 percent since pre-pandemic
Income includes wages and salaries, Social Security and other government benefits, dividends, and interest.
Who’s Doing Well and Who Isn’t?
Those dependent on wages and salaries alone have not fared well since the pandemic. That also includes many on government benefits.
The asset holders (those with interest income, rental income, dividend income etc., are doing much better.
On average, things look at least OK, if not good.
But for millions of people struggling with food and rent on real hourly earnings that have gone nowhere in four years, the economy does not look OK.
