Over the last several weeks, we’ve been highlighting a number of inflationary statistics in various economic indicators. One place, though, where consumers tend to quickly notice price increases where we haven’t seen a major uptick yet is in gas prices. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States currently stands at $2.53 per gallon, which is actually lower than the average price for this time of year going back to 2005. Additionally, so far this year the national average price has increased by just 1.2%. While that reverses a two-year trend where prices declined to kick off the year since 2005, gas prices have historically risen early in the year with the average YTD change through 3/6 being right around 7%. At least consumers have that going for them! That said, we aren’t completely out of the woods yet. On a historical basis, gas prices typically rise through the end of May before leveling off and falling from Labor Day through year-end.
