Historical Gasoline Prices in Pictures-- I thought it would be fun to look at some pictures of gasoline prices in days gone by. Of course, we have to remember that salaries were much lower in those days as well. Inflation doesn't affect all prices equally. Let's look at how Gasoline Prices and Wages relate since the 1920s. In 1924 my grandfather probably paid around 21 cents a gallon for gasoline. The average wage was about 62.6¢/hour. But that was just the average, a unionized carpenter in Boston would have made a whole Dollar an hour. Imagine paying 15½ cents for a gallon of gasoline. Although we don't have an exact date for these pictures, we can estimate the … [Read more...]
Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Hits New High
June 10, 2022 Update: AAA says the national average is now almost $5.00 a gallon (and much higher in places like California). That moves the blue dot on the chart below up and prices are now well above inflation-adjusted peaks! June 2, 2022 It's no secret that gasoline prices are skyrocketing. However, a couple of months ago we said that although gas prices were high and rising, they still weren't at record levels when looked at in inflation-adjusted terms. But all that has changed now as gasoline prices continue to climb upward. Today the AAA reported the highest national gas prices they have recorded. Although this is a significant development, all sorts of … [Read more...]
Inflation UP, CPI Down for November
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their inflation numbers for the year ending November 30th on December 15, 2015. The Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) for November was 237.336 down from 237.838 at the end of October so overall prices declined -0.21% over the month but Annual Inflation was still up 0.50% (or ½%) for the year. This is the 4th month in a row where prices are lower than the previous month. In the table below we can see that last November the CPI was at 236.151. Then prices fell through January peaked in July and then fell to current levels. Month CPI-U Index Monthly Inflation Annual … [Read more...]
Updated Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Price Chart
With the recent drop in gasoline prices perhaps you have begun to wonder exactly how close to historical lows are we? If so we have updated our famous Inflation Adjusted Gasoline Price Chart. It shows where we stand on an inflation adjusted basis. Lowest Inflation Adjusted Price of Gasoline was $1.46 in 1998 Back in 1918 gasoline was $0.25 a gallon and by 1932 prices had fallen to 18 cents a gallon! But as we all know over the last 100 years the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen drastically so in order to get the true picture we can’t just say that the lowest price of gas was 18 cents per gallon, we need to adjust the price for inflation. When adjusting for inflation there are … [Read more...]
Bureau of Labor Statistics: Inflation Down
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released their monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) data on Wednesday December 17th for November and reported lower inflation. The CPI for November was 236.151 down from 237.433 for October. This resulted in a monthly decrease in prices of -0.54% and an annual inflation rate of 1.32% down from 1.66% in October. View the chart and read the full commentary on the current annual inflation rate. Although the FED has been targeting a 2% annual inflation rate, rates are currently much lower and have often been considerably higher than 2% as well. The FED has hit their 2% target a total of 6 times out of more than 300 data points. If we count all the … [Read more...]
Gasoline Taxes by State
Yesterday we looked at the BLS' release of the July Inflation numbers and that lead to a discussion of gasoline prices and the correlation between high gas prices and politics. The first thing we looked at was the graphic of gasoline prices by state. And then we looked at the political landscape based on the percentage of the state that voted Democrat or Republican. We looked at the following graphic and noted that "the more blue the more Democrat and the more red the more Republican (which by the way is backwards compared to the rest of the world) and incidentally almost exactly backwards for the gasoline chart as well. There appears to be a very high correlation between high gas … [Read more...]
Energy Inflation- Oil and Gas Inflation
By Tim McMahon, editor It is extremely difficult to decide how over or under priced a commodity is when the scale we are comparing it to is constantly changing. By adjusting for inflation we can see what is happening to the price much easier. It pays to know what prices are in "Inflation Adjusted Terms". Once we adjust the gasoline price for inflation we can see that the average price for a gallon of gas since 1918 in June 2010 dollars is $2.39. So it is easy to tell whether gas is currently "cheap" or "expensive". For instance, the Annual Average gasoline price for 2009 was $2.34, which was extremely close to the long term average price of $2.39. While in 2008 the annual average … [Read more...]