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Monday, June 08, 2020

Six High Frequency Indicators for the Eventual Recovery

by Calculated Risk on 6/08/2020 08:11:00 AM

These indicators are mostly for travel and entertainment - some of the sectors that will probably recover very slowly.

The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.

TSA Traveler Data Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Blue) and 2020 (Red).

On June 7th there were 441,255 travelers compared to 2,669,860 a year ago.

That is a decline of 83.5%. There has been an increase off the bottom, but air travel is still down significantly.

The second graph shows the year-over-year change in diners as tabulated by OpenTable for the US and several selected cities.

Move Box OfficeThanks to OpenTable for providing this restaurant data:

This data is updated through June 6, 2020.

The US was off 100% YoY as of March 21st.

New York is still off 98%.

Texas is only down 46% YoY.

Move Box OfficeThis data shows domestic box office for each week (red) and the maximum and minimum for the previous four years.  Data is from BoxOfficeMojo through June 4th.

Note that the data is noisy and depends on when blockbusters are released.

Movie ticket sales have picked up slightly, but have been essentially at zero for eleven weeks.

Most  movie theaters are closed all across the country, and will probably reopen slowly (probably with limited seating at first).

The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four week average.

Hotel Occupancy RateThe red line is for 2020, dash light blue is 2019, blue is the median, and black is for 2009 (the worst year probably since the Great Depression for hotels).

2020 was off to a solid start, however, COVID-19 has crushed hotel occupancy.

Notes: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.

STR reported hotel occupancy was off 43.2% year-over-year last week.  Occupancy has increased somewhat over the last few of weeks, but is still very low.

gasoline Consumption This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows the year-over-year change in gasoline consumption.

At one point, gasoline consumption was off almost 50% YoY.

As of May 29th, gasoline consumption was off about 20% YoY (about 80% of normal).

The final graph is from Apple mobility.

Apple Mobility Data This data is through June 6th for the United States and several selected cities.

IMPORTANT: All data is relative to January 13, 2020. This data is NOT Seasonally Adjusted. People walk and drive more when the weather is nice, so I'm just using the transit data.

According to the Apple data public transit in the US is still only about 41% of the January level. It is at 26% in New York, and 64% in Houston.