News Release

EMBARGOED UNTIL RELEASE AT 8:30 A.M. EDT, FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2019
BEA 19—23

Personal Income and Outlays, April 2019

Personal income increased $92.8 billion (0.5 percent) in April according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $69.3 billion (0.4 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $40.8 billion (0.3 percent).

Real DPI increased 0.1 percent in April and Real PCE decreased less than 0.1 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.3 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2 percent.

  2018 2019
Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr.
Percent change from preceding month
Personal income:  
   Current dollars 0.9 -0.1 0.2 0.1 0.5
Disposable personal income:  
   Current dollars 1.0 -0.2 0.2 0.1 0.4
   Chained (2012) dollars 1.0 -0.1 0.1 -0.2 0.1
Personal consumption expenditures (PCE):  
   Current dollars -0.6 0.3 0.0 1.1 0.3
   Chained (2012) dollars -0.6 0.4 -0.1 0.9 0.0
Price indexes:  
   PCE 0.1 -0.1 0.1 0.2 0.3
   PCE, excluding food and energy 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.2
Price indexes: Percent change from month one year ago
   PCE 1.8 1.3 1.3 1.4 1.5
   PCE, excluding food and energy 2.0 1.8 1.6 1.5 1.6

The increase in personal income in April primarily reflected increases in personal interest income, wages and salaries, and government social benefits to persons.

The $3.7 billion decrease in real PCE in April reflected a decrease of $5.4 billion in spending for services that was partly offset by a $2.4 billion increase in spending for goods (table 7). Within services, the largest contributor to the decrease was spending for household electricity and gas. Within goods, spending for gasoline and other energy goods was the leading contributor to the increase. Detailed information on monthly real PCE spending can be found in Table 2.3.6U.

Personal outlays increased $42.7 billion in April (table 3). Personal saving was $990.3 billion in April and the personal saving rate, personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income, was 6.2 percent (table 1).

Updates to Personal Income and Outlays

Estimates have been updated for October through March. The percent change from the preceding month for current-dollar personal income, and for current-dollar and chained (2012) dollar DPI and PCE -- revised and previously published in last month's release -- are shown below.

  Change from preceding month
February March
Previous Revised Previous Revised Previous Revised Previous Revised
(Billions of dollars) (Percent) (Billions of dollars) (Percent)
Personal income:  
Current dollars 35.6 40.9 0.2 0.2 11.4 21.0 0.1 0.1
Disposable personal income:  
Current dollars 23.0 23.9 0.1 0.2 0.6 8.3 0.0 0.1
Chained (2012) dollars 5.9 9.5 0.0 0.1 -28.3 -21.9 -0.2 -0.2
Personal consumption expenditures:  
Current dollars 11.7 -2.1 0.1 0.0 123.5 157.3 0.9 1.1
Chained (2012) dollars -2.8 -13.1 0.0 -0.1 87.4 117.8 0.7 0.9
QCEW Data Included in the Fourth Quarter of 2018

This news release includes revised estimates of wages and salaries, personal taxes, and contributions for government social insurance for October through December 2018 (fourth quarter). These estimates reflect the incorporation of newly available fourth-quarter wage and salary tabulations from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program.

Upcoming Annual Update of the National Income and Product Accounts
The annual update of the national income and product accounts, covering the first quarter of 2014 through the first quarter of 2019, will be released along with the "advance" estimate of GDP for the second quarter of 2019 on July 26. For more information, see the Technical Note.

Next release: June 28, 2019 at 8:30 A.M. EDT
Personal Income and Outlays: May 2019