by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
The longer the Pandemic drags on, and work-from-home gets entrenched, the further Old Normal moves out of reach.
There has been a recovery of sorts, but it has been frustratingly partial and in some areas, such as office occupancy, even minimal, with many peculiar shifts, twists, and turns – each with losers and winners: That’s what real-time data trackers are pointing out.
The AEI released its latest weekly Foot Traffic Index for 40 metro areas in the US today, based on cellphone GPS data from Safegraph.com. The index was put together to track the recovery from the Pandemic. The seven-day moving average tracks daily visits to “points of interest,” such as stores, malls, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, airports, hospitals, other places of commerce, and other points of interest, and visits from employees.