Retail and recreation activity is returning — except in London
With “freedom day” finally upon us, I wanted to see whether it showed up in Google’s COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports. Not surprisingly, the answer is “yes”, even though the start of school holidays sometime that week in most places in England will have created additional perturbations that make it hard to interpret. However, looking at the data does show just how much London lags behind every other region in its recovery.
Before I get into more commentary, let me explain a few things about the data shown. In order to better identify any impact that changes to social distancing and other COVID-19 related rules might have had on the 19th July, the chart only shows Mondays (as there are significant differences in mobility patterns depending on the day of the week). (Having said that, London’s lack of recovery is evident regardless of weekday.)
For this chart, I have not gone into the trouble of correcting for things like different timings of school holidays. However, it’s clear that they have a big impact: the two previous spikes seen in the data in April and May coincided (broadly) with the end of Easter holidays and start of the summer half-term. Note also that the Google mobility data is provided by local authority, which I have averaged up to the UK regions shown (without any weighting).
What is really remarkable is the degree to which mobility to retail and recreation locations in general — and on the 19th of July — has not increased in London. Even the least-recovered other region, East Midlands, had mobility levels of around -10% relative to the February 2020 baseline. In many places, retail and recreation mobility already exceeds pre-pandemic levels. This is in stark contrast with London, where the index lingers around -30%.
A similar pattern is visible for the other mobility indices Google compiles, namely for “Transit stations”, “Workplaces” and “Grocery and pharmacy”. Given that the “Workplaces” index correlates very well with the proportion of people on furlough, this does not bode well for London’s labour market. Even green spaces in London are seeing fewer people, despite a general increase in park usage nationally.
The one index that is much higher in London than elsewhere is the one measuring “Residential” mobility. This indicates a profound shift in London’s internal geography, no doubt partly due to the ability of many more of its residents to work from home than in other regions. I will post about this later, but a more detailed look into the local authorities within London shows that, not surprisingly, central London boroughs have lost the most footfall to workplaces and retail and recreation sites.
