Light Vehicle Sales Per Capita: A Better Look At The Long-Term Trend

Note from dshort: Following up on today's Retail Sales report for December, I've now updated my long-term perspective on vehicle sales to include the BEA's December data, published yesterday on the FRED website.

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For the past few years I've been following a couple of transportation metrics: Vehicle Miles Traveled and Gasoline Volume Sales. For both series I focus on the population adjusted data. Let's now do something similar with the Light Vehicle Sales report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This data series stretches back to January 1976. Since that first data point, the Civilian Noninstitutional Population Age 16 and Over (i.e., driving age not in the military or an inmate) has risen 60.8%.

Here is a chart, courtesy of the FRED repository, of the raw data. This is a quite noisy series, to be sure.

Here is my version on the FRED chart with a couple of additions.

• I've added a 12-month moving average to smooth the noise and help visualize the trend.
• I've overlaid a linear regression (the red line) to further illustrate the long-term trend.

Click for a larger image

In the chart above, the latest moving average value is 6.7% below is record high in September 2000.

Here is the same chart with two additional modifications.

• I've created a per-capita version using the FRED's CNP16OV series for the adjustment.
• I've indexed the numbers so that the first data point, January 1976, equals 100.

Click for a larger image

The moving-average for the per-capita series peaked in February 1979. Thirty-five-plus years later, it is now down 29.1% from that February 1979 peak month.

The good news is that this adjusted metric has continued to rise from its Great Recession historic low, and it is now back above the linear regression. It will be interesting to see if the post-recession growth continues in the months ahead.