Tag Archives: Bureau of Economic Analysis

With a boost from the calendar, personal income rose 0.5 percent in May faster than economists had forecast while personal consumption went up 0.3 percent, as expected, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday. Data for April was revised to show income grew $18.3 billion instead of the originally reported $5.6 billion decline. Data on spending for April was unchanged. Data for April was revised to show income grew $18.

The nation’s economy grew at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the first quarter, far slower than previous report for the three months ended March 31, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Wednesday. Previous reports on the nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), based on incomplete data, had estimated growth at 2.4 percent, and economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected the most recent report would confirm that growth rate.

According to BEA, profits fell for both financial and non-financial corporations in the first quarter. For financial corporations, it was the fourth quarterly decline in profits in the last five quarters. The slip in financial corporation profits comes at a particularly critical time for the financial sector, as housing-so heavily dependent on lending institutions--is in the midst of a nascent recovery, and that recovery is causing concerns that we may be on the cusp of yet a new housing bubble. Recent data shows home prices rising at the fastest pace since the housing bubble burst.

Restrained by drops in farm income and sequester-driven cuts in government programs, personal income slipped $5.6 billion in April while personal consumption spending dropped $20.5 billion, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday. Though the income drop was less than one percent (0.04 percent), and it was less than the 0.1 percent increase forecast by economists who also expected April spending to be flat compared to March.

The nation's economy grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.4 percent in the first quarter, slightly slower than originally reported, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Thursday. At the same time, corporate profits in the first quarter were $1.97 trillion, down almost $44 billion from the fourth quarter. The last time corporate profits showed a quarter-over-quarter decline was in the first quarter of 2012. Corporate profits are considered a key indicator of employment trends. Residential fixed investment was essentially unchanged from the initial report at $397.3 billion.

Imagine if someone removed the speedometer from your car and then put limits on how fast or slow you could drive. That's what 11 House members are doing with legislation which would prohibit the Census Bureau from any data collection except for the decennial headcount of Americans. The impact of the bill HR 1638 would be to eviscerate and effectively eliminate the monthly employment situation report that produces, among other things, the unemployment rate as well as a host of other bits of data about the economy. The sponsors of the bill must believe that if we don't count unemployment it won't exist.

Restrained by slow wage growth, personal income rose a disappointing $30.9 billion (0.2 percent) in March--half of what economists expected--as spending rose $21.0 billion or 0.2 percent, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, reported Monday. Personal income had improved $15.2 billion in February, largely on the strength of an $80 billion increase in dividend payments. Dividend payments in March increased by $4.5 billion over February.

The nation's economy rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.5 percent in the first quarter, slightly slower than economists had expected but more than six times the growth rate in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Friday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected gross domestic product (GDP) to grow at a 3.1 percent pace. Residential fixed investment added $11.8 billion to GDP, down from the $15.3 billion contribution in the fourth quarter, and spending on non-residential structures actually subtracted from GDP, albeit a scant $200 million.

What do you do when you find out Santa Claus doesn't exist? That's the situation former vice presidential candidate/House Budget Committee Chair/potential presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) faces now that the study which provided him with the academic support for budget cuts (aimed principally at so-called entitlements) has been undermined. Harvard economists Carmen M. Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in 2010 published a research paper which held that for countries with debt loads equivalent to or greater than 90 percent of annual economic output, ""median growth rates fall by 1 percent, and average growth falls considerably more.""

Personal income rose a solid $143.2 billion or 1.1 percent in February, dwarfing expectations, and spending jumped $77.2 billion, or 0.7 percent, the, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, reported Friday. The data suggest the personal spending component of Gross Domestic Product remained strong in the first quarter. That income grew faster than spending was a boost to personal savings, which increased to $310.9 billion in February from $262.5 billion in January, up from 2.2 percent of disposable (essentially after-tax) income to 2.6 percent.