Scott Hoyt, an economist at Moody’s Analytics who specializes in consumer spending, said there were two competing hypotheses as to why the savings rate had dropped. “One is that consumers have just decided that they need to spend ”” they need to replace the car, the appliance, they want a new wardrobe.” The other, he said, is that the data, which is often revised months down the road, is simply incorrect.
“There have been several times where we spent a year or more talking about a negative savings rate” ”” meaning consumers spent more than they took in ”” “only to get benchmark revisions to the data,” Mr. Hoyt said. “The savings rate’s never been negative.”