The American consumer was undeterred last month and price pressures were a bit less acute than some feared, top-tier US data released into Friday’s holiday void showed.

Personal spending rose a brisk 0.8% in February, the BEA said. That was much quicker than the 0.5% consensus expected and matched the highest estimate from nearly six-dozen economists.

Real personal spending was likewise ahead of consensus, running 0.4% versus 0.1% expected.

The figures came on the heels of GDP revisions which showed the consumption impulse was stronger last quarter than initially reported.

The solid read was in some sense incongruous with February’s retail sales release which, you might recall, showed nominal sales rose 0.6% last month from January. That sounds decent, but it was underwhelming relative to consensus, and the miss was magnified by a downward revision to January’s already sharp slowdown.

Personal income rose 0.3% last month, Friday’s BEA update showed, a touch lower than the 0.4% economists wanted to see. The saving rate was 3.6%, the lowest since December 2022.

On the inflation front, core price growth was in line at 0.3%. Unrounded, the MoM print was 0.26148%. That’ll work, actually. Not necessarily to get us back to 2% YoY on a sustainable basis, but at least to allay concerns that the disinflation process might’ve gone completely off the rails early this year (as some suggested based on the last two CPI releases).

YoY, core price growth was 2.8%, matching estimates. The MoM core readings for January and December were revised slightly warmer, but not by enough to matter.

The headline gauge came in cool, rising 0.3% MoM versus expectations for a 0.4% increase. The gauge rose 2.5% YoY.

Plainly, the month-to-month readings on the core index need to cool further. Despite undershooting consensus on an unrounded basis, February’s print counted as the third-warmest since last May, when the monthly readings started to decelerate in earnest. Measured on a six-month annualized basis, core price growth is running 2.9%.

Mercifully, the “supercore” measure watched closely by the Fed (i.e., core services ex-housing) rose just 0.2% last month, much better than the prior month’s (rather harrowing) 0.7% pace.

All in all, Friday’s release was about as favorable as it could’ve been. Price growth was cooler at the edges (and much cooler at the “supercore”) and spending robust. Choose your favorite macro meme: “Soft landing,” “Goldilocks,” etc.