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Economy in Brief
Italian Consumer Confidence Remains Hammered Down
Italy's consumer confidence fell month-to-month...
U.S. Current Account Deficit Deepens to Record in Q1'22
The U.S. current account deficit deepened to $291.4 billion during Q1'22...
Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Index Declines Further in June But Remains Positive
The Kansas City Fed reported that its manufacturing sector business activity index fell to 12 in June...
U.S. Unemployment Claims Edged Down
Initial claims for unemployment insurance filed in the week ended June 18 declined by 2,000 to 229,000...
U.S. Energy Prices Reverse Earlier Gains
Retail gasoline prices surged to $5.01 per gallon (63.1% y/y)...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
by Charles Steindel June 26, 2019
State personal income growth in the first quarter of 2019 averaged somewhat lower in the first quarter of 2019 than in the fourth quarter of 2018, but the variation in growth was fairly narrow. West Virginia reported the highest rate of growth, 5.6%, while South Dakota was the only state seeing a decline. Growth was generally low in the Plains states and some other portions of the Middle West, reflecting a sharp drop in farm income. Elsewhere, income growth in both Connecticut and New York trailed the national pace, reflecting declines in property income (dividends, rent and interest), which bore more heavily on the wealthy residents of those states. The drop in property income types explains why some poor states were relatively strong in the first quarter: Maine and New Mexico joined West Virginia in seeing personal income grow at a rate exceeding 5 percent (Arizona was also in that group).
While the typical focus of this release is on the growth rates, levels of personal income are widely skewed across the states. The aggregate income of California residents in 2019:Q1 was, at an annual rate, more than $2 ½ trillion; that of Vermont residents was less than $35 billion. Thus, a comparison of Vermont’s Q1 growth rate of 4.5% (11th in the nation) to California’s 3.1% (34th) hardly reveals much about how the two stand compared to each other!