Personal Consumption Expenditures - PCE

A measure of price changes in consumer goods and services. Personal consumption expenditures consist of the actual and imputed expenditures of households; the measure includes data pertaining to durables, non-durables and services. It is essentially a measure of goods and services targeted toward individuals and consumed by individuals.

Also referred to as "consumption."

|||Similar to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), PCE is a report (actually a part of the personal income report) put out by the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the Department of Commerce.

There are two broad indexes of consumer prices in the United States: the CPI and the Chain Price Index for Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCEPI). They are similar in many respects, but there are some important differences that can lead to large gaps between CPI and PCEPI inflation rates. The PCEPI uses a chain index, which takes consumers' changing consumption due to prices into account; the CPI uses a fixed basket of goods with weightings that do not change over time.

The PCE is a fairly predictable report that has little impact on the markets.