On the heels of the year’s biggest travel week, some interesting news:

Consumers purchased an average 9.32 million barrels of gasoline a day in the week ended Nov. 23, down 1.7 percent from the same week last year … It was the fifth consecutive week that demand at the pump dropped compared with a year earlier.

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The price [of gas] was 38 percent higher than a year earlier.

That’s right, population rose, but gas consumption fell, year-over-year. Measured per person, that’s a decline of about 3 percent — not huge, but still noteworthy.

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So does this mean that higher prices are starting to take a bite out of our appetite for fuel? That a slowing economy is making consumers tighten their belts? Either way, as long as it isn’t a temporary blip in the data, it’s a trend worth paying attention to.