[Mr. K]

"First of all, if you look closely at the graph it doesn’t look all that correlated"

huh? which graph are you looking at? This is an incredible correlation

[sefarkas]

First, they do not tell you the source of gasoline price data. National average? Who pays the national average? Employment is also quite regional in America. Even with the two year shift in the plot, the correlation is hardly perfect. Note that correlation is not cause. GDP is a function of many variables, lagged or not. It is difficult to represent the largest economy on Earth with a two dimensional graph/model.