Since April 2020, now we have estimated how the retail economies of 30 main US metropolitan areas are recovering from COVID-19. By aggregating 11 metrics (throughout retail gross sales, native financial indicators, and virus unfold), our mannequin predicts that these metropolitan areas will face differing ranges of COVID-19 disruption. For these metrics, we checked out US metropolitan-, county-, and state-level information on:
- Prior dependency on retail. We checked out retail gross sales per capita, retail sector employment per capita, and estimated retail GDP.
- Severity of the COVID-19 outbreak. We appeared on the dimension of outbreak per capita, per capita deaths because of COVID-19, how briskly instances are growing, and the variety of new unemployment filings.
- Remediation efforts. We checked out estimated social distancing information, foot site visitors in retail places by state, and the way proactive the stay-at-home orders have been in every metropolis.
Whereas every metro space has its personal peaks and troughs, now we have seen two nationwide peaks – one in spring 2020 and one this winter. It seems that in February 2021 there are promising indicators that we’re on the downswing from the winter peak. Within the 30 metro areas we examined, we discovered that the common month over month enhance in COVID-19 instances is the bottom it has been since November 2020. Moreover, US retail gross sales grew 5.3% in January, which was the best enhance in 7 months.
Though there’s constructive information on the US nationwide stage, metro stage retail economies are nonetheless seeing various ranges of restoration. This month, Dallas, New York, and Los Angeles are additionally in our “yellow” (i.e. weaker retail restoration) zone. At this level, these metro areas have excessive per capita ranges of day by day an infection, in addition to excessive unemployment.
If you need to see the information behind these metrics or see extra metropolitan areas, please contact your Forrester account consultant, please schedule an inquiry with me, or e-mail Madeline Cyr, researcher, at mcyr@forrester.com.
