The latest from our honest, loving, caring government statisticians says:
Personal income increased $85.8 billion, or 0.6 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $74.7 billion, or 0.6 percent, in November, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $41.3 billion, or 0.4 percent. In October, personal income increased $7.5 billion, or 0.1 percent, DPI increased $6.4 billion, or 0.1 percent, and PCE decreased $6.6 billion, or 0.1 percent, based on revised estimates.
Hmmmm...
The big gainers were actual wages and salaries (much representing a reversal of the loss from Sandy, as expected) and transfer receipts (that is, gimmes) -- with most of that being in Social Security payments ("disability"?)
PCE (outlays) also were up, but not as much as incomes.
This was a fairly solid report. Some of this was clearly snapback from Sandy disruptions, but not all. I cannot ignore the transfer payment increase; that was unexpected, especially in the Social Security area, but one also cannot ignore actual wage gains, which appear to have occurred.
One problem with this report is that we already got an employment report covering this time period, and they don't mesh. If you remember the employment report showed that nearly a half-million fewer people were employed in November on a raw (no adjustment) "count" basis, not including population change, and the employment-population rate fell.
Show me a +250k employment report for December and an increase in both hours worked and hourly wages that is nice and solid and I might believe this is accounted for by sampling skew and Sandy.
Otherwise this is my response to the report this morning: 
