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Monday, December 26, 2022

Four High Frequency Indicators for the Economy

by Calculated Risk on 12/26/2022 10:00:00 AM

This will likely be the final weekly update of these high frequency indicators. I've been posting these and more since the beginning of the pandemic. It has been interesting watching these sectors recover as the pandemic impact subsided.


----- Airlines: Transportation Security Administration -----

The TSA is providing daily travel numbers.

This data is as of December 25th.

TSA Traveler Data Click on graph for larger image.

This data shows the 7-day average of daily total traveler throughput from the TSA for 2019 (Light Blue), 2020 (Black), 2021 (Blue) and 2022 (Red).

The dashed line is the percent of 2019 for the seven-day average.

The 7-day average is 10.1% below the same week in 2019 (89.9% of 2019).  (Dashed line) 

Air travel - as a percent of 2019 - has picked up recently - but still below pre-pandemic levels.

----- Movie Tickets: Box Office Mojo -----

Movie Box OfficeThis data shows domestic box office for each week and the median for the years 2016 through 2019 (dashed light blue).  

Black is 2020, Blue is 2021 and Red is 2022.  

The data is from BoxOfficeMojo through December 22nd.

Note that the data is usually noisy week-to-week and depends on when blockbusters are released.  

Movie ticket sales were at $236 million last week, up about 37% from the median for the week - thanks to "Avatar: The Way of Water".

----- Hotel Occupancy: STR -----

Hotel Occupancy RateThis graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.

The red line is for 2022, black is 2020, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2021. Dashed purple is 2019 (STR is comparing to a strong year for hotels).

This data is through Dec 17th. The occupancy rate was up 9.2% compared to the same week in 2019. 

The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is above the median rate for the previous 20 years (Blue) and close to 2019 levels.

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

----- Gasoline Supplied: Energy Information Administration -----

gasoline Consumption
This graph, based on weekly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), shows gasoline supplied compared to the same week of 2019.

Blue is for 2020.  Purple is for 2021, and Red is for 2022.

As of December 16th, gasoline supplied was down 7.4% compared to the same week in 2019.

Recently gasoline supplied has been running below 2019 and 2021 levels - and sometimes below 2020.