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Personal Income and Outlays
THE MONTHLY PERSONAL INCOME and Outlays report, produced by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), contains incredible detail on income-related measures, as well as spending data for virtually every imaginable good and service. Commonly referred to on Wall Street as “income and spending,” the report consists largely of income statistics, but the underlying detail on spending may just be the most comprehensive of all economics statistics.
What more could an economist—and those who trade on economic news—ask for in an economic indicator than timely detail on what consumers earn and what they spend their earnings on? And all on a monthly basis: the Personal Income and Outlays report is released about four weeks after ...