2 Restoration of mobility differs across activities

The overall mobility index used here – which measures visits to and length of stay at a particular place as a percentage of pre-lockdown levels – is an average of mobility for visits to six kinds of places: retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, work and residential. Each of these activities shows different levels of normalisation. The latest retail and recreation mobility index shows the lowest recovery, with activity levels at just 75.2% of the base value. Work-related mobility was 83.9%, compared to 90.2% for transit. The relatively muted recovery in work-related mobility is in keeping with the weakness in labour markets captured in other highfrequency indicators as well. For example, both the manufacturing and services Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) noted a fall in employment in January, even though the pace of job shedding has been moderating.

The grocery and pharmacy head shows that visits to such places has more than recovered from the base value, with the latest value at 114.6%. Residential mobility continues to go down, suggesting that people are spending less time indoors, although it is still higher than the base value.