Overall, gas prices remain on a decline, though there have been more recent fluctuations.
The single-year decline in price recorded in April, measuring the drop over the 12-month period ending last month, was 12.2 percent for gas of all types, according to numbers released Wednesday by the Labor Department. In April, prices compared only to the prior month saw a significantly different outcome, with a three percent jump. A non-governmental source, AAA, that also collects data on gas prices at consumer pumps shows a similar progression, with the average national price on Wednesday some 80 cents below the average cost at the pump for regular gas a year ago. On Wednesday, the average was also lower than price levels seen both a week and a month ago.
Overall inflation was also down, with the single-year inflation rate across all items reaching an April level that was the lowest seen since April 2021 — two years prior. The April 2023 level of price increase over the year prior was 4.9 percent. There is another authority — the Commerce Department — in the federal government that also produces measurements of inflation, but their figures generally come later in the month. The single-month rate of inflation in April per the Labor Department, meaning the rate of price increase compared just to the preceding month, was 0.4 percent, which was a slight increase from the same measurement in March but still slightly below the Labor Department’s separate calculation of the average increase in hourly earnings for workers across nonfarm payrolls in April. Thus, it seems incomes were largely keeping pace with recent inflation.
