US personal mobility hits eight month high: govt data

London (Quantum Commodity Intelligence) - Americans made an average 1.3 billion trips each day in May, the most since October 2019, data from the Department of Transportation showed Wednesday.

These figures point to a significant increase in fuel consumption in the world's largest gasoline market.

Mobility has increased each month since December, during the peak of Covid-19 contaminations, and is now only slightly below pre-pandemic levels.

By comparison, Americans made 1 billion trips per day in May 2020 and 1.4 billion trips per day in May 2019.

Short trips around people's homes appear to be driving most of the increase.

There were 359 million trips below 1 mile in May, up 7 million on the month and the highest figure since data collection began at the start of 2019.

The US embarked on a huge vaccination campaign against Covid-19 at the start of the year.

More than half of the population had received at least one vaccine jab at the time of writing, enabling the return of much of a normal life.

Trips are defined as movements that include a stay of longer than 10 minutes at a location away from home.

The Department of Transportation bases its calculations on anonymised mobile phone data.

The latest data is updated until 29 May.