There’s an interesting mystery in the statistics that came out Thursday from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal income — after inflation — rose about 0.4% in October from the previous month. Personal spending went up too, after adjusting for inflation, by 0.5%.

​So, where’s that extra 10th of a percent that people are spending coming from?

​The answer may well be in a third statistic in Thursday’s report: The personal saving rate went down in October to 2.3% The last time Americans saved that little was 17 years ago.

There was a while there around the height of the pandemic when people were really building up their savings — partly because there weren’t many places to go to spend money and partly because of all that COVID relief. In April 2020, the personal saving rate was almost 34%.

But, even before the pandemic, “U.S. consumers were saving around 8% to 9% of their income on a monthly basis,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY. “Today, we’re seeing the saving rate around 2%, which is an indication that consumers are increasingly struggling in the face of high prices and elevated interest rates.”

Struggling … but still spending. People have kept buying things, going out to eat and traveling even though prices have risen significantly. 

All that may be good for the economy, Daco said. “But if we look at the source of income for their spending, that is not a sustainable source of income.”

In other words, not only are people not saving much right now, they’re dipping into their savings to pay for things — including basic expenses.

In a recent survey, Angela Fontes at the Financial Health Network said the nonprofit found that a growing number of households are struggling financially. 

“We did see an increase in the proportion of households who said they weren’t making their regular expenses and a decrease in the proportion of households that said they had enough savings to cover three months of living expenses,” she said.

People are increasingly putting purchases on credit cards too, according to a recent survey from Bankrate.

“Sixty percent of people in credit card debt have had it for at least a year. And that’s up 10 percentage points from last year,” said Ted Rossman, a Bankrate analyst. “Savings is being eroded, debt is going up, a lot of people are close to the edge, unfortunately.”

The saving grace right now is that for all the recent high-profile layoffs in tech and media, Rossman said the overall job market remains strong.

Stories You Might Like

Savings are up, spending is down. Are consumers better off or just nervous?

We’re back to saving less

We’re saving less. Will we spend less?

With prices falling and incomes rising, consumers get a break in time for Christmas

In the coronavirus economy, consumers are saving their money

Consumers are spending up a storm — and spending down their savings