The UK consumes just under 1.7 million barrels of oil a day. This means that, over a month, a $10 rise in the price of oil takes $510m (around £313m, at current exchange rates) out of the (non-oil) economy, by reducing the spending power of oil users. Over a year, this is equivalent to just under 0.3 per cent of GDP.
Americans use much more oil than we do - 11 times as much, even though their national income is only six times ours. So oil's effect on their economy is bigger: a $10 rise, over a year, takes 0.5 per cent out of GDP.
These numbers seem small. But so is a $10 move in the oil price. It's only a 14 per cent change. Since 1973, the average annual percentage change - in either direction - has been twice this.
Oil, then, matters for the economy. Since the early 1970s spikes in the real oil price (the price deflated by the consumer price index) have led - with a lag of a couple of years - to spikes in US unemployment.
Contrary to most expectations at the time, high oil prices in 2007-08 led to soaring unemployment.
But surely it was the collapse of the housing market and financial system that caused this recession, not oil prices? Not quite, says James Hamilton of the University of California San Diego. He points out that high oil prices contributed to the housing crash, by squeezing the real incomes of home-owners and forcing some out of work - which in turn led to defaults on mortgages. In this sense, the housing market was just one mechanism through which expensive oil damaged the economy.
So, despite all the talk of service-based or knowledge-based economies, and reduced energy intensity, developed western economies are still sensitive to oil prices.
