Amidst a fairly boring/predictable PCE report yesterday (confirming the sharp re-acceleration of the CPI and the core PCE ex housing measure), we saw a major upside surprise to the personal income statistic.

This happens most often in re-inflationary periods and we once again see a firm personal income trend in Q1 due to cola adjustments enhancing the embedded inflation math.

This is a strong sign for the US consumer and something we have seen in Q1 every year since the inflation wave began.

Chart 1: Strong upside in personal income growth