NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Personal income rose, but spending fell in September, the government said Friday, as a robust third quarter ended with a whimper.

The Commerce Department said personal income rose 0.3 percent after rising a revised 0.3 percent in August. Economists, on average, expected it to rise 0.2 percent, according to Briefing.com.

Spending by consumers, which accounts for about 70 percent of the nation's economic activity, fell 0.3 percent after rising a revised 1.1 percent in August. Economists, on average, expected spending to fall 0.1 percent, according to Briefing.com.

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U.S. stock prices rose in early trading after the report; traders were more likely to focus on separate reports, due later Friday morning, on consumer confidence and Chicago-area manufacturing. Treasury bond prices rose.

Consumer spending grew at a 6.6 percent annual rate in the third quarter, which ended in September, according to a separate Commerce Department report on Thursday. Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, surged at a 7.2 percent annual rate as a result.

Child credit tax rebates and proceeds from a wave of mortgage refinancing helped fuel the burst of spending in the summer, effects that have faded in the early fall. Disposable, after-tax income dropped 1.0 percent in September, in fact, marking the end of rebate checks, according to the department.

"The ... report makes it clear that, without the treats given to us by tax cuts and low interest rates, consumers are on their own," said Joel Naroff, president and chief economist of Naroff Economic Advisors in Holland, Pa. "Let's just hope they don't trick us and slow spending sharply."

Many economists believe that future consumer spending will depend, in large part, on improvements in the job market. Non-farm payrolls grew modestly in September, the first such growth since January, according to the Labor Department, and economists hope that growth will accelerate.

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An improving job market should boost wages, which have been supported during the longest labor-market slump since World War II by astonishingly high rates of growth in productivity, which is a measure of output per worker hour. Productivity cuts the cost of doing business, and the savings have been shared between corporate profits and those people who still have jobs.

But wage growth slowed in September, gaining 0.1 percent, following August's 0.2 percent gain. Proprietors' income, which some economists believe reflects in part the income of a new group of self-employed workers, rose 0.7 percent, including various accounting adjustments, following August's 0.5 percent gain.

Personal saving -- disposable income minus spending -- fell to $235.2 billion from $294.3 billion in August. Personal saving as a percentage of disposable income was 2.9 percent, compared with 3.5 percent in August.