Americans Started Saving Aggressively As COVID-19 Concerns Picked Up In February Americans' incomes grew at 0.6% MoM in February (following a 0.6% MoM jump in January and better than the expected 0.4% rise) as their spending slowed to just a 0.2% MoM growth (also for the second month in a row). Source: Bloomberg On a year over year basis, income growth slowed modestly as spending accelerated. However, private worker wage growth slowed notably, rising only 3.2% Y/Y, down from 3.7% in Jan and the lowest since Nov 2016, but government wages rose to 3.9%Y/Y in February, the highest since Jan 2019 But, the savings rate jumped again to 8.2%, up from 7.9% and the highest since March 2019... Finally, The Fed's favorite inflation indicator - Core PCE Deflator - accelerated to +1.8% YoY, the highest sicne Dec 2018... Source: Bloomberg As a reminder, all of this was broadly-speaking before stocks started to tank and the virus lockdowns went into place. Tyler Durden Fri, 03/27/2020 - 08:42