climbed 0.6% in August <\/a>from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Friday, in the thick of the back-to-school shopping season. After adjusting for inflation, spending rose 0.4% last month.\n <\/p>\n\n \u201cRecent data show consumers resumed spending over the summer, especially those with higher incomes. And why wouldn\u2019t they? Unemployment is still low, nominal wages are still increasing and asset valuations are near all-time highs,\u201d Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin said Friday at an event in Washington, DC.\n <\/p>\n
\n The US labor market is slowing, with job growth sputtering and unemployed Americans taking longer to find a job, raising the risk of conditions deteriorating. That was a key reason why the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates last week for the first since December.\n <\/p>\n
\n But unemployment remains low at 4.3% and layoffs haven\u2019t surged, according to Labor Department data. That bodes well for spending in the coming months.\n <\/p>\n
\n Americans with higher incomes continue to power the US economy while low- and middle-income households remain strained by the higher cost of living. That divergence is also becoming evident in sentiment surveys.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s the higher-income people in the country who do the majority of the spending, and those are the same people who are more likely to have investments,\u201d Stephanie Guild, chief investment officer at Robinhood, told CNN.\n <\/p>\n
\n Major US stocks indexes have hit record highs repeatedly over the past couple of months, boosted by expectations of Fed rate cuts, continued AI fervor and solid company earnings. On Friday, stocks rose after Trump\u2019s latest tariff announcements, on track to snap a three-day losing streak.\n <\/p>\n
\n A resilient stock market is keeping some households with higher incomes from souring like their lower-income counterparts.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cSentiment for consumers with larger stock holdings held steady in September, while for those with smaller or no holdings, sentiment decreased,\u201d Hsu of the University of Michigan said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Guild said that \u201cwith the market at record highs, despite the last few days, I definitely think it makes people feel comfortable about their savings.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Americans are souring on the economy again to levels seen rarely in the post-World War II…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-184442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}