As one might expect in this time of Covid lockdowns, the Office of Highway Policy Information reported a year over year decrease in May 2020 of 26.1%
And yet, if:
- We take the seasonally adjusted sales dollars of Gas Stations from the Census Department’s Advance Retail Sales survey (black line) and
- Divide that by the seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index’s Motor Fuel component (red line)
- We get the implication (dotted line) that gas stations have been seeing a sharp increase in the gallons of gas they have sold since April.
This suggests that the CPI and the Retail Sales can’t both be right.
Gas stations do sell chips and soda, and trucking fuel might not be a part of Retail Sales, but still …