In America people spend approximately 3% of their annual income on traveling. These findings were recorded in 2008, and it is my opinion that the recession has caused a decline in the 3% since then. The 97% portion of the graph incorporates mortgage payments or rent, food, utilities, clothing, insurance, entertainment and communication costs. Families work in order to pay for the cost of living, which is so high that people are not able to take as much time away from all this as they used to. One of the things I noticed about this graph is the 44% of that 3% is used for transportation. That just shows you that the price of traveling is dependant on the price of oil and gas. It also shows our dependence on outside countries that are in control of the indispensable energy of everyday life.
The Bureau of Labor has access to people’s tax records to use as part of their research. Because this site is a .gov I believe it is very accurate and reliable as far as factual information goes. Out of anyone who could come up with this graph, the US Department of Labor knows about this stuff on a national level. They have a lot of data to analyze and support. This data point is probably under the scrutiny of the BLS on a yearly basis. This is relevant to my topic because if Americans are among the most traveled people in the world this impacts the tourism industry negatively. The percent of a households traveling costs will have an effect on the tourism industry because of the recession and because of what I said above (people having to work and pay the 97% of the graph just to live normaly). This data opened my eye’s up to all the things households pay for besides their travel costs. This also made me sad because Americans aren’t taking as much time for themselves anymore and their mostly focusing on making it financially on a daily basis.
Month, By. "Travel: BLS Spotlight on Statistics." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. July 2010. Web. 05 Dec. 2010. <http://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2010/travel/>.
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