Kai Risdahl

The Energy Information Administration says gasoline consumption fell about 1% last year from 2024, and it was down 4%.

from the pre-pandemic high in 2019.

And that is happening despite the fact that we're driving more.

Vehicle miles traveled is the government's measure of our driving habits, up more than 1% last year.

And as Marketplace's Henriette reports, that's in keeping with a decade-long trend of slowly rising fuel efficiency.

I was just going to say the heart of Little Saigon.

Southern California has the largest population of Vietnamese people outside Vietnam, and that community is concentrated in a part of Orange County called Little Saigon.

I'm embarrassed to say that I've been in L.A.

for 25 years.

I've never been down here.

Wow.

Which is bad on me, I guess.

Best Vietnamese food in the world here in Vietnam.

I think that's our next stop today.

All right.

Great.

I finally came down here for our continuing series, The Age of Work, which is about the aging of the U.S.

labor force and those in other wealthy countries and the younger, increasingly dynamic workforces in some developing economies.

And over the next couple of days, we're going to be bringing you stories from Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, about the growing role the labor force there is playing in shaping the global economy.

But we're starting here in Little Saigon with three stories of generational change.