U.S.consumer spending drops with inflation hitting 40-year high

U.S. inflation-adjusted consumer spending fell last month by the most since February, suggesting that Americans tempered their outlays amid the latest Covid-19 wave and the fastest inflation in nearly 40 years.

Purchases of goods and services, adjusted for changes in prices, decreased 1% from November, the Commerce Department said Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price gauge, which the Federal Reserve uses for its inflation target, rose 0.4% from a month earlier and 5.8% from December 2020, the most since 1982. Unadjusted for inflation, spending fell 0.6%, while incomes rose 0.3%.

In another sign of inflation pressures throughout the economy, a separate Labor Department report Friday showed U.S. employment costs rose at a robust pace for a second straight quarter, highlighting the rapid compensation gains seen in the second half of the year as businesses competed for a limited supply of workers.

The data come after the Fed, seeking to tame inflation and preserve the recovery, endorsed interest-rate liftoff in March and opened the door to more frequent and potentially larger hikes than anticipated following its two-day policy meeting on Wednesday.

A surge in coronavirus infections due to the omicron variant likely slowed spending in December as more Americans stayed home, and high prices were probably also a deterring factor. That impact could carry over to the beginning of the first quarter as economic activity remains subdued, though most analysts expect the slowdown to be shortlived.

“There’s a risk that the high inflation we’re seeing will be prolonged, there’s a risk that it will move even higher,” Chair Jerome Powell said during a press conference Wednesday. “We have to be in a position with our monetary policy to address all of those plausible outcomes.”

The median forecasts in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for a 1.1% decrease in inflation-adjusted spending and a 5.8% rise in the price index from a year ago.

A separate report Thursday showed personal spending grew 3.3% in the final three months of 2021, led by a pickup in services outlays. Friday’s data for December suggest that consumer outlays were concentrated in the earlier part of the fourth quarter.