FILE - This record photograph from Monday Oct. 17, 2016, shows shoppers and pedestrians successful a crosswalk adjacent a elephantine billboard adjacent to Macy's flagship section store successful Herald Square successful New York. Macy's has filed a suit against the institution that owns the billboard, warring to forestall Amazon from taking implicit the advertizing abstraction that carried Macy's sanction for astir 60 years. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

FILE - This record photograph from Monday Oct. 17, 2016, shows shoppers and pedestrians successful a crosswalk adjacent a elephantine billboard adjacent to Macy's flagship section store successful Herald Square successful New York. Macy's has filed a suit against the institution that owns the billboard, warring to forestall Amazon from taking implicit the advertizing abstraction that carried Macy's sanction for astir 60 years. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File) (Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

WASHINGTON – U.S. user spending accelerated successful August amide a surge successful COVID-19 cases, adjacent arsenic soaring request and snarled proviso chains kept ostentation high.

Consumer spending roseate 0.8% successful August, up from a diminution of 0.1% successful July. Income roseate by a smaller 0.2%, the Commerce Department reported Friday. That suggests consumers dug into their savings to substance much spending connected items similar apparel and groceries, and to walk much online, adjacent arsenic the delta variant caused them to propulsion backmost connected traveling and eating out.

Consumer prices accrued 0.4% successful August from July, the aforesaid summation arsenic the erstwhile month. In the past year, ostentation roseate 4.3%, up somewhat from the erstwhile period and the highest successful much than 3 decades.

Supply shortages of everything from machine chips to furnishings to overgarment and chemicals person driven up prices arsenic the economy's rebound from the pandemic recession caught galore companies flat-footed.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that proviso concatenation disruptions, specified arsenic jammed ports connected the West Coast and mill shutdowns successful Asia amid COVID spikes, person lasted longer than the Fed expected. Keeping prices unchangeable is 1 of the Fed's mandates, on with seeking maximum employment.

Still, Powell said helium expected proviso concatenation problems to commencement improving adjacent year, which would commencement to propulsion ostentation little successful the archetypal fractional of 2022.

There are aboriginal signs that spending picked up further successful September, arsenic caller COVID cases person started to wane. Spending connected hose tickets accrued successful precocious September and full credit-card spending roseate successful mid-September from a period earlier, according to a Bank of America report.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.