The BEA’s open. Hooray!

After a lengthy blackout brought on by the longest US government shutdown on record, America’s second-most prominent statistical agency published its marquee personal spending and income report on Friday.

This data is, unfortunately, for September, which is to say “stale” is a polite euphemism. In the normal course of business, this would’ve been published late in October. It’s — checks watch — December.

I don’t want to call the figures irrelevant because that wouldn’t be entirely accurate. This release of course includes the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, which suggested underlying price growth ran just 0.1981% during the last month of Q3, the slowest since April.

That was in line with consensus and marked the third consecutive 0.2% (rounded) print for core PCE. On a YoY basis, the core measure rose 2.8%, also consistent with expectations.

This’ll give the Fed a little more confidence in next week’s rate cut, which is anyway warranted by a succession of lackluster reads on the US labor market.

The only thing working for the US economy is spending, and that’s not nothin.’ In fact, it’s damn near everything. On that score, Friday’s release was mixed at best.

Nominal spending rose 0.3% two months ago, as expected, but real spending was flat versus calls for a slight gain.

That too may allay FOMC hawks’ concerns that rekindled spending could presage more in the way of “sticky” services inflation.

Notably, the so-called “supercore” measure the Fed monitors — core services inflation excluding housing — rose a benign 0.2% in September, according to Friday’s release.

That metric’s still running 3.3% YoY, but that’s tolerable. Or at least if you’re reasonably well-off it is.