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Last week we posted using the Google Mobility Data (Google LLC “Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports”. www.google.com/covid19/mobility/ Accessed: 10/8/20) as a proxy for economic activity (see here for the full details). Google’s data has now been updated to 4th August so we have updated our two measures (‘Activity’ and ‘Economic Activity’).
The full Activity measure, first chart, shows a clear recovery across QLD and NSW which translates to a move up in the national measure. Cairns continues to perform very well.
However, when we consider just the ‘Economic Activity’ measure, see second chart, we note that things appear to have merely stabilised. The difference is caused by a sharp increase in the 7-day average of the ‘Parks’ index which is excluded from the ‘Economic Activity’ measure.
We should note that the average of the indexes is not weighted (we are still trying to source data that would allow us to do this) and that by excluding the ‘Residential’ index from the ‘Economic Activity’ measure we are possibly ignoring the effect of people working more from home…we are working on being able to adjust for this effect.
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August 10th, 2020 at 8:26 am
I have been looking at this data too for cairns components. The daily data shows a sharp structural uplift in Parks on July 4 following eased restriction in Queensland on Friday July 3. A softer employment period also correlates with school holidays. Spikes around public holidays are also apparent with Cairns Show 17/7. Google seem to indicate a different methodology for residential given everyone spends significant time a day at home anyway which may be less volatile. You have saved me a post.
August 10th, 2020 at 9:44 am
Mark, Yes it’s certainly not a straightforward data-set. I’v excluded the Parks and Residential indexes from the ‘Economic Activity’ measure partly for some of the reasons you mention. Not sure that’s the best we can do, but at this stage haven’t worked out a better methodology for handling these indexes. Cheers, Pete