Personal income shot up by a record 3.7 percent in December on a big dividend payout by software giant Microsoft Corp., a government report showed on Monday. That helped to boost consumer spending during the holiday season by 0.8 percent.
The Commerce Department reported Monday that the income gain would have been a smaller 0.6 percent in December without the one-time $3 per share dividend payment Microsoft made on Dec. 2. Even that reduced figure would have been an improvement over the 0.4 percent rise in personal incomes in November.
*For more on this story,
read the full Associated Press story
.
