finance

OpenTable Data and Employment

Restaurant traffic has been falling as the number of new cases and hospitalizations for COVID-19 has been rising. Why is this important? Because it will impact employment.

This graph overlays employment numbers from the Census Bureau’s Pulse Survey (black line) against the year-over-year change in OpenTable restaurant traffic data.

You can see they correlate pretty well.

According to the Census data, we’ve lost about 1.5mm jobs since the last employment report. Opentable data is updated more frequently. It continues to fall, suggesting that the number of jobs lost since the last employment report is closer to 2 million jobs now.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago

Mortgage Apps are Moving Up!

As I discussed a few days ago, housing price appreciation is accelerating. I expect this trend to continue as inventory is low and demand is high. More evidence of demand? Mortgage purchase apps continue to growth.

Here’s a graph of the year-over-year change in the MBA Purhcase Application Index.

Year-over-year Change in Mortgage Purchase Applications

The Fed has done its job – lowered interest rates and goosed demand. We’ll see what happens to prices as the summer goes on.

By Christopher Schwarz, ago