More good news yesterday for electric service customers.
The Commerce Department published the numbers it uses to estimate the gross domestic product. Including personal consumption expenditures, which is seventy percent of the GDP.
Including the expenditures for cars, clocks, carpet, computers, cereal, clothing, cosmetics, child care, cabs, clubs, cable, cell phones and casinos. That’s just the c’s.
And including the expenditures for electric service.
In September, the total spent for electric service was only 1.41 percent of personal consumption expenditures.
That’s not much. In the last seventeen years, since the year 2000, the percent for September was under 1.41 in just one year. That was back in September 2003.
And the percent was right at 1.41 in September 2004. In every other of the seventeen Septembers, the percent was higher, in some years significantly higher.
September 2010 was 1.62 percent. Indeed, from 2007 through 2011, the percent exceeded 1.53 in each September.
More recently, from 2012 through 2015, the percent exceeded 1.47 in each September. So the 1.41 level this September is quite a drop from recent years.
When the percent of total expenditures spent to pay electric bills is this low, that means more money is spent on other goods and services.
Casino gambling, for example. This September, the percent of total expenditures spent at casinos was 0.75, more than half of what was spent to pay electric bills.
Less for electricity means more for gambling and other things we want and need.
Number-crunching and good news courtesy of Public Utilities Fortnightly.
Steve Mitnick, Editor-in-Chief, Public Utilities Fortnightly
E-mail me: mitnick@fortnightly.com
