Here are updates of two charts I have posted monthly regarding national income and consumer spending during the COVID-19 recession, including new numbers for May and revisions to numbers for prior months.

Personal Income in May was 2.0% less than in April and 14.8% less than in March. March personal income was boosted by the $1.9 trillion federal relief package that was enacted that month. Consumer spending increased by a slight $2.9 billion (0.02%) from April to May, while the saving rate dropped from 14.5% to a still quite high 12.4%.

On the first chart, the stacked columns show estimated personal income for the U.S. as a whole, by month, from January 2019 through May 2021. The numbers are seasonally adjusted annual rates. I have broken personal income into four parts: employee compensation (wages and salaries, and supplements); unemployment insurance benefits; other government social benefits (e.g., Social Security pensions, Medicare and Medicaid funded healthcare services, stimulus checks); and other income (e.g., interest, dividends and profits of non-corporate business activities, including property rentals).

Personal income in May was $414.3 billion less than in April. Government social benefits were down by $562.3 billion. Employee compensation was up by $89.6 billion. Income from all other sources was up by $58.4 billion.

Also on the first chart, the black line shows monthly personal consumption expenditures. Again, these numbers are seasonally adjusted annual rates. Consumption expenditures in May 2021 were $2.9 billion (0.02%) more than in April and $781.9 billion (5.3%) more than in February 2020, the last month before the pandemic began to shut down the economy.

The second chart shows the personal saving rate, monthly from January 2019 through May 2021. (The saving rate is equal to the amount of personal saving divided by the amount of disposable personal income. Disposable personal income equals personal income less personal current taxes, which are mostly income taxes).

The saving rate jumped from 8.3% in February 2020 to an astounding 33.7% in April and then declined in steps to 13.1% in November. The saving rate moved up modestly in December, jumped to 20.6% in January, fell back to 14.7% in February, jumped to 27.7% in March and dropped back to 12.4% in May. The total amount saved from April 2020 through May 2021 was $3.96 trillion. Had the saving rate been the average for 2019, 7.5%, the amount saved would have been just $1.61 trillion. Excess saving over the 14 months, thus, totaled $2.35 trillion.

These numbers are preliminary estimates that will be revised as more information becomes available to the statisticians at the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis.

The BEA press release is here. A BEA table showing the effects of selected federal pandemic response programs on personal income is here.