By the numbers
Gas prices for Midwestern motorists have once again fallen below the $3 per gallon threshold on a three-month rolling average basis, recent figures from the Energy Information Administration show.
The EIA manually gathers price data by surveying about 1,000 retail outlets by phone or email every week. The price reported includes taxes. For the purposes of government statistics, the Midwest region is defined as the area bounded by Michigan to Tennessee on the east and by North Dakota to Oklahoma on the west, and everything between.
In nominal terms, the highest three-month rolling average price recorded for the Midwest during the period from 1995 to the present was $4.48 in July 2022. The average price has fallen cyclically since, dropping below the $3 mark in January 2024, and again in November of that year. The most recent figure for which data were available at deadline was from the last week of April, when the rolling average price was $2.94 per gallon.
Before the 2022 spike, the previous all-time high was $3.93 in August 2008, coinciding with the housing market bubble. Gasoline prices plummeted during the Great Recession but returned to $3.80 by 2011. Prices slid rapidly at the end of 2014 and reached a 10-year low in March 2016 at $1.70 per gallon. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent government lockdowns drove gasoline prices down even lower, reaching $1.68 in June 2020.
When prices are adjusted for inflation, however, the 2008 spike remains the most extreme. Because the price level overall was significantly lower in the 2000s than today, $4 for a gallon of gas in 2008 was relatively more costly then than it would be today. Historic prices were adjusted to 2025 dollars using the Urban Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed via FRED.
In 2025 dollars, the 2008 spike would have been the equivalent of gas prices reaching a three-month average of more than $5.78 per gallon today.
The underlying data can be accessed at this link.
