May 15, 2020- We’ve added two new weekly indicators.
New weekly indicators: seated diners at restaurants in the U.S., Arizona, and Phoenix and Arizona business applications
Scroll down for the latest data on seated diners for the U.S., Arizona, and Phoenix. These data show year-over-year seated diners at restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins. For year-over-year comparisons by day, we compare the week ending Saturday to the same week in the previous year. This dataset is based on a sample of approximately 20,000 restaurants that provide OpenTable with information on all of their inventory.
We’ve also added Census weekly data on business formation for Arizona. These data reflect weekly applications for Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) in Arizona which are likely to result in employment and wages.
According to Census research, these include applications: (a) from a corporate entity, (b) that indicate they are hiring employees, purchasing a business or changing organizational type, (c) that provide a first wages-paid date (planned wages); or (d) that have a NAICS industry code in manufacturing (31-33), retail stores (44), health care (62), or restaurants/food service (72).
Applications for EINs occur before the jobs and wages are added, so this is a leading indicator.
You will notice that these data are not seasonally adjusted, so there is a big drop each year during the Christmas holidays, followed by a rebound early in the new year.
The Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity will release April employment data for Arizona on May 21 (next Thursday). The news will be bad. Exhibit 1 shows the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for the U.S. and Arizona. The U.S. data is through April, the state data is through March.
The national unemployment skyrocketed to 14.7% in April. Arizona’s rate is like to jump up in a similar fashion in April.
Exhibit 1: Arizona and U.S. Unemployment Rates, Seasonally Adjusted, U.S. Recession Shaded
For the week ended May 9, Arizona initial claims for unemployment insurance declined to 31,600 from 43,000 the prior week. During the past eight weeks, the state has seen 548,900 initial claims, as measured by the Office of Economic Opportunity.
Arizona household employment, seasonally adjusted by EBRC, was 3,457,400 in January 2020. Assuming that all of the initial claims during the past eight weeks correspond to employment losses that persist, the number of employed individuals has declined by 15.9%.
For the U.S., initial claims for unemployment insurance declined to 2.98 million for the week ended May 9, from 3.2 million in the prior week. During the past eight weeks, the U.S. has seen 36.5 million initial claims.
The U.S. hotel occupancy rate rose slightly for the week ended May 9, to 30.1% from 28.6% in the prior week. That was still far below year ago levels, but was the fourth consecutive increase.
U.S. movie ticket sales rose modestly during the week ended May 7, to $130,200, but remained 98.0% below the year ago level. New releases remained low at just 3 during the week.
Ticket sales will remain depressed until the studios begin to release more new movies. That is expected to happen over the summer.
TSA traveler throughput also rose modestly for the week ended May 9, to 1,181,000. That was the highest total since the end of March. It was also 92.8% below last year’s level.
Seated diners at restaurants providing information to OpenTable were down 97.9% over the year nationally (week ended May 9). Seated diners were down 100% over the year for both Arizona and the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Finally, Arizona business applications dropped 9.4% over the year for the week ended May 9. That marked the eighth consecutive week of declines or no growth.
As the impacts of social distancing work through the economy due to the spread of COVID-19, tracking the performance of the labor market and the travel and tourism sector will be key. While these indicators look terrible now, they will help us spot an emerging recovery once the virus is controlled. Stay tuned…we update this page daily and are adding new indicators…
AZ Coronavirus Cases | US Coronavirus Cases | Unemployment Claims AZ | Unemployment Claims U.S.
U.S. Hotel Occupancy Rate | U.S. Movie $ Ticket Sales | U.S. Movie Releases | TSA Passenger Throughput |
Restaurant Seated Diners | Arizona Business Applications
Daily Indicators
Use your cursor as a tooltip and click on charts to view values. Click on the names of indicators listed at the bottom any chart to switch them on/off to view fewer at one time and make comparisons. Icon at the bottom of each table allows you to download data and share.
Weekly Indicators
Note: An advanced number for Arizona Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance is released on Tuesdays covering the week ending the previous Saturday. We publish the advance number here on Tuesdays. The official release is issued on Thursdays at which point we replace the advance estimate with the official count.
Note: The official Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance numbers for the U.S. are released every Thursday morning covering the week ending on the previous Saturday.
Note: Weekly movie ticket sales and number of releases are published on Thursdays covering the previous week beginning on Friday.
