By Geoffrey Smith
Investing.com -- U.S. household spending stayed strong in October amid tentative signs that inflation may be easing.
Personal spending rose 0.8% from September, an acceleration from 0.6% in September, and comfortably ahead of a 0.3% rise in the price index for personal consumption expenditures. PCE prices are the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of inflation and the data suggests that the tightening of monetary policy by the Fed over recent months still hasn't stopped U.S. consumers from spending - even if there are increasing signs that they are dipping ever deeper into savings in order to do so.
The numbers broke a sequence of months this year in which spending has failed to keep pace with inflation.
Another sign of the economy's robustness came with a decline in the number of people making initial claims for jobless benefits last week. Initial claims fell to 225,000, from 241,000 the week before. However, continuing claims rose by more than expected to 1.608 million, their highest in nine months.