Personal Saving

Personal income headed in the right direction in April — up 0.4% in real terms according to today’s BEA report. This is not particularly surprising, since we already know that employment growth was strong in April, but it’s good news nonetheless. Interestingly, consumers did not spend all of this increase in income. In fact, they seem to be slowly increasing their saving. The savings rate has crept up to 2.4% from well under 2.0% last year. Is this the long-awaited retrenching of household finances?

Kash