Ohio ranked 37th overall in terms of per capita spending with consumers, on average, shelling out $33,138 on such things as food, gas and utilities in 2012.
That brought total spending in the state to about $383 million, up about a 12 percent since the economic recovery began six years ago, according to the new “prototype” report from the Commerce Department.
But total consumer spending across the state jumped 15 percent in the five years leading up to the recession that began in 2007.
The slowdown in spending — which accounts for about 70 percent of the national economy and is a primary driver of job growth — reflects stagnant wages and the declining values of homes and other assets, said Thomas Traynor, a labor market economist at Wright State University.
“Consumer expenditures are really just a function of consumer incomes…and states with higher average income levels are going to have higher average spending levels,” Traynor said.
Personal income, or the sum of all sources of income, is closely related to consumption spending and offers some clues as to why the recovery has been uneven across the country.
Nationwide, real personal income ranged from a decline of 1.2 percent in South Dakota to an increase of 15.1 percent in North Dakota.
Perhaps not surprisingly because of its oil boom, North Dakota was the only state to have stronger spending after the recession than before the recession, according to the Commerce Department report.
In Ohio, personal income grew at almost exactly the same rate as consumption, according to the report, which showed state personal income grew 3.7 percent to $462 million from 2011 to 2012.
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