have stuff in their car, food, blanket, gloves. also you have some tips for us on how to conserve fuel. as you said, the national average is around $3.07. what are the major tips. the two big things you can do. one is to just drive conservatively. imagine there s an egg under your gas pedal and your brake pedal and you don t want to break that egg. if you avoid quick stops and starts you can see a 30% improvement. the other is just drive the speed limit. for every five miles per hour that you drive over 60 miles an hour, it s like adding an extra 24 cents on to what you re paying at the pump. that s a huge increase when you re already talking high gas prices. drive the speed limit. slow and steady wins the race. absolutely. christy hyde joining me.
channel tell us it should be a quiet week, so hopefully no more big weather delays this week. thomas? we ll take the quiet weather. mara, thanks so much. let s check in on the situation from mark potter in pompano beach, florida. besides driving, drivers dealing with the creeping gas prices. $3.07 now for regular unleaded. reporter: it didn t seem to affect people very much in terms of being on the road. here on the florida turnpike in the northbound lane, you re not seeing very much right now, but the florida highway patrol expects those numbers to increase later today. nationwide, aaa is saying that 87 million people have hit the road this holiday season, and that s up 3% over last year at this time. among those people who are traveling with us right now is the montalba family. came down from atlanta. they re heading home. we re interrupting their trip a
it is a dent. there seems to be progress on the job market. we seem to be seeing accelerating job growth. the number of people filing claims for unemployment insurance is falling last week. what most forecasters are looking for is a solid uptick in growth in 2011. we might see growth in the 3.5, maybe even 4% range. if that forecast is right, what we should see is an unemployment rate that comes down gradually. maybe we get down to around 9% by the end of the year. it s still too much unemployment. too many people looking for jobs. but it would be a pretty measurable improvement over 2010. one thing a lot of people are noticing right now because of travel and travel increasing on the roads, the average of gas right now is above $3, roughly hovering around $3.07. are we going to see gas prices inch up throughout the year, getting us to that $4, $5 a gallon mark? that is one of those risk
the courage average for regular unleaded is $3.07 a gallon. maria is live and mark potter is live in pompano beach, florida. mara, i want to start with you fwifrt. what s happening at the airports? as you can see, these people are waiting about an hour just to check in and that s partly because a lot of the travelers have been rebooked and they re finished up trips they started in 2010. now, the faa is reporting some delays on arrivals at jfk, but for the most part, travel has resumed back to normal in the new york city area after a week of post-holiday travel that was anything but festive. for her, leaving her grandma s house is becoming an all-too familiar ritual. she was supposed to wrap up her
been talking about since so many people are traveling. the gas prices out there right now with the national average roughly around $3.07. are we going to see gas prices shoot up and get us close to the ugly $4, $5 mark? it s possible. when oil was back in 2007, we re going to have to go up 60 bucks from here to get up to that, unless there s some sort of shortage we re not anticipating. it s possible we can get back to $4. when we were there in 2007 and 2005 dur kag trina when prices spiked up during that period, the economy was strong enough to handle it. we re not as strong as we were then. i m not sure that $4 gasoline is the type of barrier or tax that people worry about. it s not pleasant, but it s not an economy killer. all right. what about the ore end? food? you re going to get mark nal