If the numbers on your receipts got ♑bigger, and your bank account balance got smaller in September, you’re not alone, accor🅷ding to a monthly government report.

Consumer spending surged 0.7% in September from August, outpacing the 0.3% growth in income, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Friday. The spending spree—which had already been shown in separate reports—pushed the savings rate down to 3.4%, its lowest since December, and half the 7.7% savings rate in February 2020 just before the pandemic hit. 

What’s more, inflation-adjusted after-tax 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:disposable income fell 0.1%, the fourth decrease in as many months, suggesting that as a whole, consumers are going into the red.

“Amelia Earhart said never to interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done. We'll try to bite our tongues, but real income has fallen for four straight months,” Shannon Seery and Tim Quinlan, economists at Wells Fargo Securities, wrote in a commentary. “Increasing your spending when your income is shrinking is not sustainable.”

The new data confirmed a trend that economists have been analyzing for years: Consumers collectively saved massive amounts of money when the pandemic hit—they were pretty much forced to, since businesses were closed—and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:hav𒅌e been sp𓄧ending it away ever since. (What’s less clear is who, exactly, still has extra money and how much.)

Whether people continue to buy cars, movie tickets, and go to restaurants like there’s no tomorrow has serious implications for the economy: Consumer spending has 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:propped up economic growth even as rapid inflation and high interest rates have dragged it down. Whether consumers' finances are healthy enough to keep it up could determine whether the U.S. economy stays chugging along, or enters a recession in the coming year.

One reason some economists expect the latter scenario: The Federal Reserve has raised its influential 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:fed funds rate to a 22-year high over the last year and a half, pushing up 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:interest rates on mortgages, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:car loans, 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:credit cards, and other consumer credit. The goal is to discourage borrowing and spending, restore the balance between supply and demand, and push inflation down to the Fed’s goal of a 2% annual rate.

That hasn’t worked out completely as planned. Friday’s report showed inflation continuing to cool, albeit very slowly. Consumer prices as measured by Personal Consumption Expenditures rose 3.4% over 12 months as of September—the same as in August and July. Meanwhile, so-called core inflation, which excludes volatile prices for food and energy, fell to 3.7% from 3.8% over the year.

Consumers have shrugged off high interest rates for consumer loans, thwarting the Fed’s efforts to slow spending. That suggests the central bank may have to keep interest rates higher for longer, prolonging the 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:misery for homebuyers and other borrowers who are faced with the highest interest costs in decades, economists said.

On the flip side, a more aggressive Fed means savers who buck the spend-at-all-costs trend could continue to get 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:h🦩igh returns onܫ certificates of deposit and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:high-yield savings accounts.