What trucks reveal about the state of the economy
During the coronavirus pandemic, policymakers have to take speedy decisions. In the economy, though, they often rely on data that come with a substantial time lag. But smarter indicators can reveal real-time activity.
Road toll indicator
Traffic in goods is an excellent indicator of a country’s economic activity, because fewer trucks on the roads and highways mean demand is falling. A look at company payments collected by road toll operators shows in real time which way the economy is currently heading.
Power consumption
During the German lockdown between the end of March and mid-April, demand for electricity during work days was 7.5% below the level logged before the pandemic. It is expected that power consumption in Germany this year will be 10% lower than in 2019, even though industrial output is slowly recovering.
Tracing your routes
Global tech giants like Apple and Google analyze huge sets of data daily that users of navigation apps such as Google Maps provide on a regular basis. When locked down at the end of March, 60% fewer Germans used their navigation apps, showing to what extent their mobility was restricted.
Restaurant bookings
A survey released in March by online service company OpenTable provided a foretaste of how hard the pandemic was hitting the hospitality sector. At the beginning of that month, restaurant bookings were more or less equal to those in the same period of last year. But when the virus struck, bookings dropped to almost zero during the lockdown. Restaurants only reopened in July.
Air traffic turbulence
The drop in air travel passenger numbers was unprecedented, from about 15 million flights in Germany in February to virtually none at all just a few weeks later. Data collected by flight tracker Flightradar24 underscored the dramatic hit to the industry as planes were grounded worldwide. In April, some 75,000 fewer planes took off around the globe than in the same month a year earlier.
Unemployment spike
A more classic indicator of economic activity are the jobless figures. In Germany, the number of unemployed people jumped by 415,000 to 2.5 million people in April. Since then, numbers have continued to grow, but the increase has been less pronounced than in April as massive wage support provided under a government short-time work program is alleviating pressure on the German job market.
New car registrations
A good forward-looking indicator of economic sentiment are corporate and private purchases of new cars. The latest figures made available by German road traffic regulators show however that Europe's biggest economy is still in dire straits. In March, new car registrations were 37.7% lower than a year ago, while in April 61% fewer cars were sold in the country.