Gas prices are down 51 days in a row now according to Yahoo Finance/WSJ. (Actually should be 52 now since this was from yesterday) WOOHOO!!!! Who's taking the camper on a road trip?!

Unemployment is at 3.5%, it's lowest level in 50 years. 528,000 new jobs in July. So lots of people should be able to afford to put gas in their tank. We paid $3.24 today in NM, Gas Buddy shows prices as low as $3.09 in NM and $2.99 in TX and OK. Life is good!

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/sto...oa6GQcy1ZlB52P

 

Allen,
High gas prices are what scuttled our long planned Alaskan trip. I'm glad to see them coming down, but at what eventual cost?
As a much shorter substitute trip,
*Jeanie and I in our 2020 SB/ SC 7.3L F-350 XLT and 2020 Northstar SC (same rigs as yours only a year older),
*Our son Matt and his bride Summer with my old 2001 Dodge High Output CTD and his cherry 2001 Lance 845,
*My brother John and his fetching wife Krys in his 2022 LB/ SC 7.3L F-350 XLT and brand spanking new 10 foot ALASKAN
are spending the second half of August into September putzing around the San Juans in SW Colorado.
This trip may include some high pass bagging on Jeep trails in truck campers, and will be toward the end of the Monsoon season.
On a trip a month ago in our Subaru XTrek from Northern CA to Flagstaff and back we saw very few RV's of any type on the interstates. Gas was near it's highest.
Just the last few days we've seen a plethora of RV's of all stripes plying our SR 20 into the Sierra Nevadas. So it's turning around.
Human nature dictates that when you lock up the populous for a couple years, when that lock up ends, there is a pent up demand for people to get out of town and camp.

 

That is exactly what they was hoping for! Diesel was $1.99 a gallon 2 years ago in my area, then jumped to $6.49. Now it's $5.29 a gallon. Still ridiculous!! "Boy what a bargain!" along with everything else being over priced. Just a few short trips planned for my wife and I. Our Rent, Electricity, Gas and food is so much more expensive as well (Inflation) Only thing not going up is our wages!

 

Perhaps you missed the news articles about Tesla laying off 10% its salaried workforce and Ford laying off 8,000 workers. The first time jobless claims were over 1Million for the month of July negating any creation in the job market. You can't cherry pick data we are in a recession. Congrats that you live in part of the country where gas is cheap. A lot of people are still seeing over $1 more per gallon than you are in New Mexico.

 

The 528K new jobs for July is NET new jobs. Layoffs are included in that number, so if there were 1 million layoffs resulting in 1 million new jobless claims they were offset by 1.528 million new jobs (roughly speaking) leaving a net of 528k new jobs which is a lot more than was expected. This is NOT cherry picking data, and after the latest jobs report the widespread consensus seems to be that we are NOT in a recession, at least not yet, as much as some people seem to want us to be. Gas prices are still coming down, inflation is slowing, the jobs market is running fairly hot. Yes, we are lucky to live in a place where gas is relatively cheap - but prices are still coming down all over the country and they are already much lower than they were a few months ago. I hope they continue to do so!

 

Have you been anywhere else in the country lately? EVERYTHING is more expensive. Gas went down where you live but that's over $1 less than the national average. You can't exactly say you live in the cheapest place in the country for an item and brag about how great the economy is doing all over the whole country. 61% of America is living paycheck to paycheck up from 58% in July 2021 and 55% in July 2020. The stimi's have runout and the world has caught up.
The total labor participation rate in Feb 2020 was 63.2% of everyone in the U.S. not in an institution over 16 years of age. Today that number is 62.1%. Down for the month of July. Over 100Million people in this category over 16 years of age are not working and not seeking work. That number is higher than prepandemic levels. More people in the work force and even more people choosing not to work anymore.
The unemployment numbers ARE cherry picked. If there are 37.9% of the working aged people in America not working and not seeking work how is unemployment under 4%?

 

Jefe,
Sorry that you had to cancel the Alaska trip, that's a bummer. But the San Juans are stunning and I'm sure you'll have a great time there, with a lot less driving and a lot less fuel burned. Alaska will always be there, hopefully next summer fuel prices will be low enough to make it feasible for you!

We used our camper less and stayed closer to home while gas prices were high as well, it's nice to see them coming back down which makes using the camper for longer trips more affordable. But in the long run we'll likely sell it and switch to EV's, hotels, and tent camping or a small trailer for shorter trips. We installed solar panels so we'll be able to do most of our charging at home, and eliminating all of our gasoline expenses will help pay for a lot of hotels, campgrounds, airfare, etc.



I'm curious what you mean by this. Do you mean the environmental cost of more people burning more gas, or the cost to society of high fuel prices taking a while to come down, or something else? I can see it both ways and definitely have mixed feelings about taking long trips in a vehicle that gets 11-12 mpg at best. But it sure is nice to have a home on wheels and free lodging in dispersed campgrounds all over the western US! And it's great to not be paying $5+ for regular unleaded anymore. We paid over $7 in CA this June (we flew there and rented a car as it would have been more expensive to drive the camper) and that really stung.

I'm sure there are lots more campers and RV's on the roads now that fuel prices have come down to a more reasonable level. Although it seemed like last summer there were TONS of campers everywhere we went. Seems like a bit less now since air travel is back in full swing, but still more than just a few months ago. It seems like there are more campers for sale these days as well.

 

Correct, this is pretty much the definition of inflation. Which is high, but as I mentioned, coming down. Which does not mean we are in a recession, there is a different definition for that.

Because that is how unemployment is defined?! If you aren't looking for work you don't count towards the unempoyment rate. If you are looking for work, there are plenty of jobs available right now so you're very likely to find one, and quickly.

The labor participation rate is lower now because people decided they could retire and/or just no longer want to work for various reasons, some of them related to the pandemic.

Agreed that lots of people are living paycheck to paycheck, running up credit cards etc, inflation sucks, wages are not rising fast enough to keep up. There are problems in the economy for sure, and we may end up in a recession later this year or next year. But overall there is a lot going well and a lot to celebrate - including gas prices and inflation coming down, and lots of jobs available for those who want them or who want to find a new job that pays better.

 

It's all about the midterms.

 

Kind of like how a recession has always been defined as 2 quarters of shrinking GDP?

 

Not exactly. I thought that as well, but it turns out that is a rule of thumb, not an official definition, and does not always hold up in real life. Real economists understand that it's a lot more complicated than just GDP.

https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2022/0802

"The two quarters of declining GDP definition is a rule of thumb that does not officially define a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business-Cycle Dating Committee, which certifies and dates U.S. business cycles, defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.” A range of monthly indicators has been used by the committee to determine the peaks and subsequent troughs in economic activity. The period between the peak and the bottom of a subsequent downturn is called a recession."
...
"The data show that employment in the overall economy and output of the industrial sector in 2022 have significantly outperformed what occurred during every previous recession at a similar point. "
...
"The sharp contrast between the index’s average recession path and the six-month path in 2022 suggests that a recession is unlikely to have started in first quarter 2022, despite two consecutive quarters of declining GDP in the first half of 2022. If we were to assign a higher weight to labor market indicators, this contrast would be even more stark.The U.S. labor market as measured by the employment count has held up especially strongly in 2022 relative to past recessions, and a broad set of indicators suggests continued labor market tightness through the first half of the year."

 

In the U.S., the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months."

2 consecutive quarters is 6 months...

 

Wow man keep watching CNN and MSNBC, there very trust worthy.

 

Yes it is, but you ignored the rest of the words in the definition, which are also important.

 

I don't watch either of those, or any TV or cable news actually. I prefer to read a wide variety of sources to get to the truth of things.