Economy

High-Frequency Update: 11-29-2020

Dec 3, 2020
high frequency leading indicators update 12-20-20
By George W. Hammond, EBRC director and Eller research professor

The travel and tourism industry remains in the doldrums as the pandemic picks up speed

Arizona initial claims for regular unemployment insurance rose to 9,540 for the week ended November 21, according to advance data from the U.S. Department of Labor. The advance estimate has tended to be roughly 2,000 claims above the final count. Arizona initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance fell to 1,453.

According to the Arizona Department of Employment Security, they have paid out $12.3 billion in unemployment benefits (state and federal programs) from early March through November 21. The UI Trust Fund Balance fell to $124.5 million.

U.S. initial claims for regular unemployment insurance rose to 827,710 for the week ended November 21. Initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance fell to 311,675.

The travel and tourism industry remains in the doldrums as the pandemic picks up speed.

The U.S. hotel occupancy rate declined to 41.2% for the week ended November 21. That was 35.8% below last year.

U.S. movie box office sales fell slightly to $11.9 million for the week ended November 26, which was 91.9% below a year ago. There were 33 movies released last week, which was down 68.9% from last year.

U.S. TSA traveler throughput rose to 6.3 million for the week ended November 28, to its highest level since mid-March. Even with holiday travel, throughput was 60.3% below last year.

Seated diners at restaurants using the OpenTable app have trended down in recent weeks for the U.S. and Arizona. Activity has been a bit more stable in Phoenix. Even so, activity remains far below normal.

Travel to retail and recreation places (Google Maps data) continued to modestly trend down for the U.S. Travel has stabilized 19-20% below January for Arizona, Maricopa County, and Pima County. Travel to work has stabilized at 20-30% below January.

Arizona new business applications increased for the week ended November 21 and were up 48.6% compared to last year. That pulled the 52-week average up 10.1% over the year.

View the Data and Charts

Note: Note: Official initial claims data for Arizona are released every Thursday morning covering the week ending on the previous Saturday. Beginning with data for the week ended July 25, 2020, initial claims for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance in Arizona displayed below are published by the U.S. Department of Labor and reflect an effort to exclude claims that are obviously fraudulent.
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.

 

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. 

These data reflect weekly applications for Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) in Arizona which are likely to result in employment and wages. 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. Source: U.S. Census Bureau.

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