On the heels of the year’s biggest travel week, some interesting news:
Consumers purchased an average 9.32 million barrels of gasoline a day in the week ended Nov. 23, down 1.7 percent from the same week last year…. It was the fifth consecutive week that demand at the pump dropped compared with a year earlier.
The price [of gas] was 38 percent higher than a year earlier.
That’s right, population rose, but gas consumption fell, year-over-year. Measured per person, it’s a decline of about 3 percent—not huge, but still noteworthy.
So does this mean that higher prices are starting to take a bite out of our appetite for fuel? That a slowing economy is making consumers tighten their belts? Either way, as long as it isn’t a temporary blip in the data, it’s a trend worth paying attention to.
