At Least a Little Reason for Optimism

In this mornings' release of the personal income and outlays report, we can look to diverging trends between the incomes of small business owners vs. employees.  There is a category in the income ledger for proprietors' income. This is essentially income for small business owners that receive pass-through income from their business rather than wages or salaries that are received by employees. Here, we can do a bit of compare and contrast.

In May, aggregate wage and salary increases registered a big fat zero following a 0.1% gain in the prior month, before adjusting for inflation. Proprietors' income, meanwhile, advanced 0.4% in May following a 0.3% gain in April in nominal terms. (The inflation metric in this report fell by 0.2% in May). Since October, wage and salary increases before inflation totaled 1%, compared with a 2.4% increase in proprietors' income....496 more words left in this article. To read them, just click below and try Real Money FREE for 14 days.

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