Thursday, January 31, 2008

24th Month of Real Disposable Income Growth

The BEA reported today that Real Disposable Income grew by 2.1% in December from a year ago, the 24th consecutive month of positive growth (see chart above).

Bottom Line: Real Disposable Income is one of the 5 economic recession-indicating variables watched by the NBER (the others are real GDP, industrial production, trade sales, and employment), and the 2.1% growth in December suggests that there is still no evidence yet that recessionary conditions are affecting the U.S. economy.

Update: Graph now goes back to 2001
.

2 Comments:

At 1/31/2008 11:05 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Any way you can extend this chart back to 2000 to show how this changed leading up to and through the last recession?

 
At 1/31/2008 12:47 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mark, thanks for the update.

 

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