Oil prices hit four-year lows on Friday as employers cut the highest number of jobs in 34 years. The continuing decline in prices is so dramatic and so sudden that it is raising the prospect that gas prices could soon fall below $1 a gallon.

The worst jobs data in 34 years on Friday just added more fuel to the deepening global recession as U.S. employers slashed a far worse-than-expected 533,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate rose to a 15-year high of 6.7 percent.

A gallon of gasoline can be had for 50 cents less than it cost just last month, and people are starting to talk about $1 gas.

Granted, gas prices are a long way off from that magic number last seen in March 1999 when prices were at 97 cents a gallon. Prices at the pump fell 1.6 cents overnight to $1.773 nationally.

But consider what has happened since July 11, when a barrel of oil hit a record $147.27 and a gallon of gas was $4.117 on July 17. In less than five months, oil has fallen 72 percent.

Just this week, in which the National Bureau of Economic Research determined that the U.S. is in recession, oil has fallen 25 percent.

For gas prices to get close to a $1, oil prices probably would need to fall another $10 a barrel - something that would have impossible to fathom during first part of this year as oil prices soared near $150 per barrel.

Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service, said Thursday on his blog that retail prices could fetch $1.25 a gallon soon in parts of the Midwest, including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri.

Already, some parts of the country are seeing prices around that level. The Web site gasbuddy.com, where motorists can post local gas prices, says that motorists can fill up for $1.29 in Neelyville, Mo., a village of about 500 people near the Arkansas state line.