by Calculated Risk on 3/16/2020 01:24:00 PM

There are some sectors that will be hit hard over the next several months: hotels, airlines, restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events, and convention centers.   People will probably avoid these places as part of social distancing.

Here is some restaurant data from OpenTable:

Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US, the states of Washington and New York, and a few impacted cities (Seattle, San Francisco, and Boston).

This data is updated through March 15, 2020.

Seattle and San Francisco saw a dramatic decline starting at the beginning of March.     Starting a few days ago, restaurant traffic is declining sharply just about everywhere.

As of yesterday, San Francisco was off 72% YoY, Boston was off 70% YoY, and Seattle was off 62%.  Going forward, restaurants are closing in many states (or going to half occupancy).

Clearly the US will need to help the employees (and owners) of these impacted sectors.