Posted on 05/11/2003 5:25:34 PM PDT by cherry_bomb88
Personal income increased $35.5 billion, or 0.4 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $26.5 billion, or 0.3 percent, in March, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $30.7 billion, or 0.4 percent. In February, personal income increased $19.5 billion, or 0.2 percent, DPI increased $13.3 billion, or 0.2 percent, and PCE increased $9.2 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.
see link for full statistics
(Excerpt) Read more at bea.doc.gov ...
Interesting statistics you might want to look at.
see charts/graphs here on current CPI figures
I realize part of the sharp increases are to compensate for the sharp decreases...but that just proves this president can pull us out of anything!
Why aren't these figures reported in this kind of light on the mainstream media, hmmmmmmmmmm???? (that's a rhetorical question...ie: one not requiring an answer)
Foremost is that "personal" does not mean 'a single human being'. In IRS, BEA, and DOL speak "personal" means not corporate and includes non-profit institutions and in the specific case of this report, personal includes most nonprofit organizations (go figure).
The following is excerpted from a BEA report (.pdf file) found here and describes pending changes to be made later in 2003 to break out non-profits from 'personal'. There are some other "gotcha's" in here that aren't obvious.
Note almost all public charities are included in 'personal'. So as it stands today, you can not construe this report to mean individuals received .4% more income in March 2003.
Income and Outlays of Households and of Nonprofit Institutions Serving Households
By Charles Ian Mead, Clinton P. McCully, and Marshall B. Reinsdorf
In the national income and product accounts (NIPA’s), the personal sector comprises households and nonprofit institutions serving households (NPISH’s). Since households and NPISH’s are likely to differ in their circumstances and behavior, separate estimates of their income and outlays are of interest to many users of the NIPA’s. As part of the comprehensive revision of the NIPA’s scheduled for late 2003, BEA plans to introduce two new annual tables—one that provides separate estimates of the income and outlays of the household component and of the NPISH component of the personal sector and another that reconciles the new estimates for NPISH’s to estimates in the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) SOI Bulletin. The other NIPA tables will continue to show estimates for the personal sector, which consolidates households and NPISH’s. This article provides background information on the new tables and presents some preliminary estimates.
The new estimates will help to distinguish the saving behavior of households and NPISH’s in analyses of personal saving. They can also be used to answer questions about the importance of the nonprofit sector in the U.S. economy or in the provision of particular kinds of services, such as health care and recreation. The estimates of transactions between the household sector and the nonprofit institution sector can help to answer questions about the sources of revenue for NPISH’s, including charitable giving, and about the NPISH’s use of this revenue. Finally, the System of National Accounts 1993, which specifies international guidelines for preparing national accounts, places households and NPISH’s in separate sectors.1 The separate estimates for the household and NPISH sectors will therefore aid in comparisons of the United States with other countries.
Definition of NPISH’s
An important criterion for classifying an organization as an NPISH is tax-exempt status, but many kinds of tax-exempt organizations do not qualify for treatment as an NPISH in the NIPA’s. Some nonprofit institutions —such as chambers of commerce, trade associations, and homeowners’ associations—are considered to serve businesses rather than households. These nonprofit institutions serving business are included in the business sector in the NIPA’s. Some other nonprofit institutions that sell goods and services in the same way as for-profit businesses are also classified in the business sector. For example, tax-exempt cooperatives, credit unions, mutual financial institutions, and tax-exempt manufacturers—such as university presses —are treated as businesses.
The nonprofit institutions [presently included in personal income & outlays] that are recognized as NPISH’s provide services in one of the following five categories:
Almost all public charities are included in the first three categories, but a few are in the last two categories.
Honestly, I dunno. The report doesn't break out individuals from non-profits. Anecdotal reports from charities are that 'giving' is down.
It also depends on what 'income' means to the BEA. There are other reports that impute non-cash benefits as cash income and improved product performance is imputed as increased 'cash cost', and laid off people who no longer get UI checks are no longer counted as unemployed.... yada yada yada....Seasonally adjusted, Lake Superior never freezes.
The DOL/BEA often trys to account for non-cash factors in cash terms and they shouldn't. They oughta just report the damn numbers and tell us specifically where they got them and let us interpret the significance.
The problem with this report is too much is lumped together and seasonally adjusted. Hard to say what it means good or bad. There are a number of revisions to it under consideration to reconcile it with IRS stats. I read somewhere of some discrepancies in the 15-20% range. Could be in the BEA data or the IRS data, or somewhere else.
The unemployment rate is a very difficult figure to work with. Consider that during the early 80's unemployment was consistently around 7% and numbers around 4% were considered a "natural" unemployment rate. Ditto the same thing with the weekly Initial Claims numbers. For two decades the magic number of 400,000 has been a sign of weakness although the workforce has grown by 10%. The real number to look at in the Employment Report is the Non-Farm Payrolls. Last months numbers were soft but a lot of the jobs shed were government jobs (because the States have no money). Going out on a limb, I will guess that the May numbers will be very close to neutral, which I would take as a positive sign and so will the equities markets.
No, it means you have to dig deeper into the data to know what it actually represents, which is more difficult with some reports than others. It does contrast, for instance, the non-corporate cash flow from the corporate.
Further, summaries and general conclusions that are useful in normal times can be especially misleading during periods of bubbles, contractions, realignments, record debt and deficits, monetary pumping, some sectors inflating while others are deflating, marginal growth, etc. We're not in Kansas anymore.
The data is apolitical but can't be used blindly.
The data is apolitical but can't be used blindly. but it so often is
So why all the hula baloo by the dems????
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.