Down-to-Earth View of the “Restoration” in Close to-Actual Time, Eight Months into the Pandemic
As the indicators that have emerged as a result of the pandemic show.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The US economy has turned into the weirdest brew ever. Some aspects are booming, such as everything to do with online shopping and entertainment, while other aspects such as airlines and hotels are in the worst of depression ever. Well, eight months after the pandemic, here is my monthly update on recreation in the cities, in terms of what people are doing and where they are going, if anything, as seen from the indicators that have surfaced in almost real time as a result the pandemic.
These raw, unadjusted indicators compare the daily or weekly data this year with the level just before the pandemic or at the same time last year. Uncleaned the dates, she stumbled upon the shift in the Labor Day calendar, which fell on September 7th this year, while it fell on September 2nd last year. Independence Day was similar. But that’s the beauty of raw data.
People who go to Places of Commerce.
How many people visit stores, malls, restaurants, hotels, cinemas, airports, hospitals, offices, other commercial centers, and other landmarks in the 40 largest subway areas in the United States? The AEI’s weekly index tracks this based on cell phone GPS data from Safegraph.com (everyone tracks cell phone GPS data, including Google for their traffic information on their maps).
It does not track how much money they spent but how many people have visited trading venues and compares the number of visits on a weekly basis to the number of visits in the week before Covid, which ended January 15. A value of 100% would mean that the visits are “old normal” again in January. However, be aware that January is always a bit slow in many parts of the country given the hangover after the holidays. Still, that’s the point of reference.
The graph shows the AEI data released today for the week ending October 18. The top bold blue line is Kansas City (80% of the January level). The lower bold red line is San Francisco (45% of the January level). The bold lines in between represent Dallas (69%), Philadelphia (60%), New York (55%), and Los Angeles (49%). Click on the diagram to enlarge it.
Restaurants measured by “seated guests”.
OpenTable provides daily data on “seated guests” and tracks how many people – walk-ins and those who made reservations online or by phone – actually sat in restaurants to eat and drink compared to the same day of the week the same week last Year. based on thousands of restaurants in the US who shared this data with OpenTable. I converted the daily numbers to a 7-day moving average to accommodate the daily fluctuations.
These are the types of restaurants that guests can make reservations at. This does not apply to cafes, fast food restaurants, delis and the like. Currently, in the eighth month of the pandemic, the “seated guests” are still 41.1% fewer than last year at this point in time:
The number of restaurants that took reservations before the pandemic and are now taking reservations again has still decreased by an average of 26.5% in the last 30 days compared to the same period last year. This is a crude substitute for how many of these restaurants have reopened – grossly because some outdoor dining only have reservations canceled as diners may not show up if it’s suddenly too cold and windy (one of our favorites in San Francisco has that done; it is open, but it no longer takes reservations):
The discrepancy between the number of restaurants open, which is only 26.5% lower than last year, and the number of seated diners, which is 41.1% lower, can partly be explained by reduced capacity in restaurants inside or outside become.
Go to the office.
How many people walk into offices every day compared to the Good Times? Kastle Systems provides access systems for 3,600 buildings and 41,000 companies in 47 states and uses this data to determine “office occupancy”. The “10-city average” office occupancy in Kastle is currently 27.4% of the pre-pandemic level from the beginning of March and is thus still 72.6% lower than at the beginning of March.
Office occupancy with the subway: The utilization of these 10 subways is shown as a percentage of their level from the beginning of March – the “high-end” is a utilization of only 43.3% of the level from the beginning of March:
- Dallas: 43.3%
- Houston: 36.8%
- Austin: 35.4%
- Los Angeles: 34.0%
- Philadelphia: 28.8%
- Washington DC: 24.0%
- Chicago: 21.8%
- San José: 18.2%
- New York: 17.4%
- San Francisco: 14.7%
The weekly “Back to Work Barometer” from Kastle shows how the office occupancy in these 10 metros has developed since the beginning of March (graphic from Kastle Systems, click to enlarge):
The graph above is not a measure of employment, but rather a measure of the impact of home work on office occupancy. Offices may be open, but instead of 1,000 people working in an office building on a given day, there might only be 200 people working in the office and 800 people working remotely.
Landlords and their lenders who still think working from home is just a slip up will be billed in due course. Read … Synchrony Financial Releases Radical Work-from-Home Plan, Layoffs, And “Office Footprint Reduction”
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