Things Are Getting Better. {Gasoline}

I never did make it to Florida for my conference.  The weather gods conspired to keep me here.  Two canceled flights in two days put the lid on the whole thing.  We'll continue our series of charts today on why I think things are getting better.  I think today this is an important perspective given what we've seen the past several days with the market's decline.   I think this current decline is more from the perspective of valuation than an issue with the economy based on what we've seen in the data.  Today we'll look at something that effects nearly all of of us, which is oil and gasoline.

The price of gasoline while volatile has remained between a range of $3.00-4.00 since around 2010.  I'm guessing if you took away taxes and environmental additives that the Government adds for ozone the actual cost to fill a car would have declined.

Miles driven has actually declined.

The amount of people employed bringing us all that new oil and gas has increased to levels not seen since the early 1980's.

*Data comes from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.  You can double click on the charts if you want to make them larger.