America back to car-pooling?

Gas sales were down 0.4% this month even though gasoline prices were up about 7%. That means we used about 7% less gas in April than we did in March. That is stunning. 

Also gas sales are "only" up 16.3% from a year ago and gas prices are up 22% in that same time frame, and if we use CPI data gas prices are up 26% while gas sales were up 19%.  Any way you slice it we are using less gas than we used to, that's rare and hasn't really happened since 1992. Since then, economists have wondered at what price would we see a change in behavior.  Turns out that price is $3 a gallon.

We hit that price after Katrina in Sept 2005, and again in the summer of 2006 and real usage dipped. (See chart)  This time around starting in May 2007 gas topped $3 a gallon and essentially stayed above that mark. Since May 2007 gas usage has slowly but steadily declined.

Chart: 12 month moving average of gasoline usage in y/y % growth.

We haven't seen consumers massively pull back from gasoline usage like they did in the 1973 and 1980 recessions (remember car-pooling to work?), but today's cutbacks are starting to be noticed.