In the (so far) short military engagement with Iran, crude oil and gasoline prices have jumped significantly. The three-week change in gasoline prices at the pump for US consumers was 27 percent, the largest three-week increase consumers in the US have ever seen (with data back through the 1990s). The four-week increase is also a record.
Despite this sharp increase, gasoline prices remain near the long-run average in terms of affordability: it takes about 7 minutes of work at the average wage to purchase a gallon of gasoline. To be sure, this is a big jump of where it had been earlier in 2026, at about 5 minutes of labor. Nonetheless, gasoline is still (for now!) more affordable than it was, relative to wages, for almost all of 2022 and 2023.
Economist Writing Every Day 
Thanks for the post, Jeremy!
I theorize that there is a general problem of people experiencing a real, short term increase in the price of something (gas in this case, but often housing) and mistakenly believing it is a part of a long-term trend. Home prices really did rise relative to incomes in 2021 and 2022, and that made misleading claims of declining American affordability ring true to many people, even though homes are still more affordable than they were in previous generations.
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