Light-Vehicle Sales: Population-Adjusted November 2010 Sales

Monthly sales per thousand people at the SAAR rate. This is done by people and not number of drivers because statistics on licensed drivers are only released every two years. A fair estimation, for the present year, is about 68% of the total population (~88% of 16+ people are drivers and ~78% of the population is aged 16+). This figure has held fairly steady since 1990, before then drivers as a percentage of the population were as low as 50%. It is my opinion that the downtrend in the number of sales per thousand people ist he result of lengthening replacement cycles and a slowdown in the growth-rate of new drivers.

For more on driver demographics and trends in sales please see the Auto Sales Special Report posted in  late October.