Something strange in the neighborhood!

This chart has Nominal GDP in purple which tracks Personal consumption, measured in nominal dollars, I resume. Everything is YoY.

That red line is the price deflator, and tells us how much of the nominal GDP is real growth.  That deflator is headed down hill, and the latest estimates are that it should be hovering around zero.  That implies we have a 3% real GDP growth print coming up in a few weeks. And the jobs report is expected to show reasonable job growth.

But the Atlanta GDPNow forecast says no, the real GDP growth is likely to be 1%, it we are lucky.  And consumption growth is is barely .6% YoY. The other line, blue are hourly wages changes., and it is headed down, slightly, along with the deflator.  We are in a zero inflation environment.

So, something does not jive between the top two numbers and the bottom two.  . You can actually see them diverge, and the divergence has gotten worse in the last few quarters. Something strange in the neighborhood!