Pump prices are hitting commuters hard, goes the refrain. But is that true?
According to AAA, the national average price for unleaded gasoline is up to $3.96, rising more than a dollar since January. And who knows? Maybe another buck or two might be tacked on in the coming weeks. How hard does $4, $5, $6 gasoline really hit in 2026?
At the risk of leaving aside the flow-through of the crude oil price into expenses such as electricity, trucking, and so on, let’s just look at the pocketbook hit from filling up the family car specifically.
Before gasoline hit $5.06 in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, the prior major shock was eighteen years ago. In summer 2008, Americans were hit with $4.09 per gallon unleaded gasoline during the summer driving season.
Suppose a person drove their car 10,000 miles that year, and let’s assume their car was brand new at the time. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calculates that the 2008 vintage of automobiles averaged 21 miles per gallon. Based on that fuel economy, 476 gallons of gasoline needed to be purchased to go 10,000 miles. At that year’s peak price, the tally for that amount of gas comes to $1,947. To gauge how much that sum hurt people, consider that the average worker made $18.10 per hour in summer 2008. We can “math it out” and conclude they needed to work 108 hours to earn enough money to buy gas.
Fast forward to today. No longer does a brand-new car get 21mpg. The typical 2025 vehicle in the U.S. registers 28.1mpg in combined city/highway fuel economy.
For the reader’s edification, average fuel economy was 26.0, 27.1, and 27.2 in 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively. Unlike a 2008 vehicle that required 476 gallons to go 10,000 miles, a driver of a 2025 model vehicle needs 25% less gasoline, or 356 gallons.
Also, 2008 is starting to feel like it was a long time ago. Wages have risen by roughly fourteen more dollars an hour, to $32.03 nowadays. At the current $3.96 per gallon, the typical American needs to work 44 hours to come up with enough money to fuel 10,000 miles of driving, less than half the 108 hours we slapped on the 2008 driver.
In fact, if we are to run the arithmetic such that today’s oil shock was to equal the same price shock as in 2008, unleaded gasoline would need to touch $9.68.
We wish we could crunch the numbers for the 1973 oil embargo, but the EPA’s fuel economy standards only date to 1976. However, we can run the exercise for the 1979 shock that came amid that year’s Iranian revolution. Gasoline was $1.07/gallon in December 1979. Fuel economy came out to 15.9mpg, which is horrendous when you consider the current haul-the-soccer-team Chrysler Pacifica gets 22mpg. Also, workers in 1979 were paid $6.56 per hour on average. Pencil through the numbers and it comes to 102.1 hours of wages needed to drive a car 10,000 miles at 1979’s high point. That is very close to the 108 miles we calculated for the 2008 shock. Again, the figure right now, at $3.96 per gallon, is 44 hours of wages.
We reiterate that there is so much more to the oil price than just gasoline. There is the cost of bunker fuel to get a 40-foot container of children’s toys across the Pacific Ocean. Also, those toys are made of plastic, which is petroleum-based. From fertilizer to clothing to the keyboard that types this sentence, oil is everywhere in our offices and houses. But when it comes specifically to filling up the car, the current oil shock is a far cry from 1979 or 2008.
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