Light Vehicle Sales
Vehicle sales fell for the first time in three months in April, coming in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 15.920 million units. This represents a 1.5% decline from the previous month and a 7.1% drop from one year ago.
The first chart shows the series since 2007, which illustrates the dramatic impact of the Great Recession. This is quite a noisy series - the absolute average month-over-month change is 4.3% therefore we've added a nine-month exponential moving average (at the suggestion of Bob Bronson of Bronson Capital Markets Research). The moving average reduces the distortion of seasonal sales events (e.g., Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend) and thus helps us visualize the trend. The latest moving average is at an annual rate of 15.838 million units.
Here is the complete series data from 1976. We've added a linear regression to further illustrate the direction of the long-term trend. The latest moving average value is 11.2% below its record high in July 2005.
Vehicle Sales: Heavy Trucks
Heavy truck sales rose for the first time in four months to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 0.398 million units in April. This represents an 8.4% increase from the previous month but an 11.7% drop from one year ago. Additionally, the nine-month exponential moving average is now at 0.389 million units.
Here is the complete series data from 1967. Again, we've added a linear regression to further illustrate the direction of the long-term trend. The latest moving average value for heavy trucks is 28.4% below its record high in October 2006.
Vehicle Sales: Population-Adjustment
Since 1967, the civilian non-institutional population age 16 and over (i.e., driving age, not in the military, or an inmate) has risen about 64.2%. For a more accurate representation of vehicle sales, our next charts focus on the population-adjusted data by implementing two key modifications:
- We've created a per-capita version using the FRED's CNP16OV series for the adjustment.
- We've indexed the numbers so that the first data point, January 1976, equals 100.
The moving average for vehicle sales per capita series peaked in August 1978. Fast forward more almost 50 years, it is now down 38.6% from that peak.
