Coronavirus and the latest indicators for the UK economy and society: 17 December 2020

• According to the Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey, 80% of UK businesses are currently trading, an increase from 77% in the previous wave. See Section 3.

• Of all businesses, including those who have permanently ceased trading, 16% of their workforce are on furlough leave. See Section 3.

• According to the latest Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, in the week ending 13 December 2020 a quarter of adults in Great Britain shopped for things other than basic necessities, the highest proportion in nine weeks. See Section 4.

• According to OpenTable data, on Saturday 12 December 2020 seated UK diners increased to around 84% of their level last year. See Section 5.

• Overall prices of items in the food and drink basket remained unchanged for the third consecutive week. See Section 7.

• According to Adzuna, the volume of online job adverts was unchanged from the previous week. See Section 8.

• According to Springboard, on the week ending Sunday 13 December 2020, weekly footfall had increased in every UK country and region except Wales, compared with last week. See Section 9.

• According to the Department for Transport (DfT), on Monday 14 December 2020, the volume of all motor vehicle traffic increased by two percentage points compared with the previous week. See Section 10.

Final results from Wave 19 of the Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (BICS), which was live for the period 30 November to 13 December 2020. Out of approximately 39,000 UK businesses sampled, 26% responded.

For questions regarding the last two weeks, businesses were asked for their experience for the reference period 16 to 29 November 2020. This should be kept in mind in relation to the timing of local and national lockdowns and dependent on the location and date when the business responded, as these could have an impact on the estimates.

A comprehensive analysis of the responses from the voluntary fortnightly Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey is available in the Business insights and impact on the UK economy bulletin.

Figure 1: 80% of UK businesses are currently trading, an increase from 77% in the previous wave

Headline indicators from the Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey (BICS)

Notes:

1. All data in this section are initial weighted estimates from Wave 19 of the Office for National Statistics' (ONS') Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey. A detailed description of the weighting methodology and its differences to unweighted estimates is available in Business Impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Survey: preliminary weighted results.

2. Businesses were asked for their experiences for the reference period (16 to 29 November 2020). However, for questions regarding the last two weeks (furlough estimates), businesses may respond from the point of completion of the questionnaire (30 November to 13 December 2020).

Data download

Across all UK industries, in Wave 19:

• 76% of businesses had been trading for more than the last two weeks

• 5% of businesses had started trading within the last two weeks after a pause in trading (an increase from 2% in Wave 18)

• 7% of businesses had paused trading but intend to restart in the next two weeks

• 10% of businesses had paused trading and do not intend to restart in the next two weeks (a decrease from 13% in Wave 18)

• 3% of businesses had permanently ceased trading

This section includes some headline results from Wave 37 of the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) covering the period 10 to 13 December 2020.

Travelling to work

In the week ending 13 December 2020, the proportion of working adults in Great Britain who:

• worked exclusively from home fell slightly from the previous week, from 31% to 28%

• travelled to work (both exclusively and in combination with working from home) increased slightly compared with the previous week, from 54% to 58%

• neither travelled to work nor worked from home remained broadly unchanged at around 15%

The increasing proportion of adults travelling to work continues the trend observed in the week ending 6 December 2020, which could be attributed to the easing of national restrictions in England starting on 2 December 2020.

Shopping

The proportions of adults that shopped for food and medicine remained unchanged at 77%. The proportion of adults shopping for things other than food and medicine increased by seven percentage points from the previous week to 25%. This is the highest proportion in nine weeks and continues a rising trend observed since the easing of restrictions in England.

Further information to help understand the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on people, households and communities in Great Britain, will be available in Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain published on 18 December 2020.

As of 10 December 2020, we have been including data from OpenTable. OpenTable is a leading provider of online restaurant reservations, and these data are publicly available in their The state of the restaurant industry dashboard.

These data show the impact of recent events and restrictions on the hospitality industry using a sample of restaurants on the OpenTable network across all channels: online reservations, phone reservations, and walk-ins.

Data show the percentage of seated diners when compared with the same day of the same week in the previous year. For example, Tuesday of Week 11 2020 is compared with Tuesday of Week 11 2019.

Data for Manchester are only available from 9 November 2020.

Since the lifting of national restrictions in England on 2 December 2020, the number of seated diners in the UK has increased substantially. On Tuesday 1 December 2020, the number of seated diners in restaurants was around 4% of its total on the same day of the corresponding week in 2019. On Saturday 12 December 2020, the equivalent year-on-year figure was 84%.

There has been a marked difference in how busy restaurants in London and Manchester have been. On Saturday 12 December 2020, restaurants in London returned to around 74% of the total seated diners from the same day of the equivalent week in 2019, whereas the corresponding figure for Manchester was 2%.

This reflects the fact that London and Manchester have faced different restrictions since the lifting of lockdown in England on 2 December 2020, being placed in Tier 2 and Tier 3 of national restrictions respectively.

Incorporations

Voluntary dissolution applications

For more information on other measures of company closures not presented here, see Weekly indicators of company creations and closures from Companies House methodology: August 2020.

A timely indication of weekly online price change for a selection of food and drink products from several large UK retailers has been developed, covering the period 1 June to 13 December 2020. Details of the methodology used for these indicators can be found in Online price changes methodology. This analysis is experimental and should not be compared with our regular consumer price statistics.

The data time series, weekly growth rates, and contributions to the weekly change for all individual food and drink items, along with sample sizes, are published in a dataset alongside this release.

The overall prices of items in the online food and drink basket were unchanged between the week ending 6 December 2020 and the week ending 13 December 2020. This is the third consecutive week where the overall price change has remained stable. Figure 6 presents the contributions to the latest weekly change from each of the main categories of items.

Overall, prices have remained unchanged because some product categories experienced price falls, while others experienced offsetting price rises. The main downward contributor was spirits, which experienced a 1.3% price fall in the latest week and was responsible for a 0.07 percentage point downward effect on the unchanged overall price. The decline in the price of spirits was observed across all items in the category, with particular retailers dropping their prices for whisky, vodka and gin.

The main offsetting upward contributors to the unchanged overall price were milk, cheese and eggs, and bread and cereals; both of these added 0.06 percentage points to the overall price figure. This was mainly from yoghurt and breakfast cereals.

Figure 7, the data time series for the all-item index and some of the leading categories of the weekly change, shows that the all-item index has been on a broadly downward trend since the beginning of June 2020, with a brief increase in September 2020. The latest wave of price decline has levelled off over the last few weeks.

The price index of spirits has been more volatile, with this week's continued large week-on-week price fall for the category furthering the downward trend that started in early October 2020. The fall in spirit prices could be caused by retailers continuing to offer discounts in time for Christmas.

Since the series began in June 2020, the milk, cheese and eggs category has experienced minor fluctuations but has showed steady marked price increases in recent weeks. The milk, cheese and eggs price index is now above where it was at the beginning of June 2020 for the third consecutive week and has had the highest price index out of all categories in the food and drink basket for the last three weeks.

These figures use job adverts provided by Adzuna, an online job search engine, and include experimental estimates of online job adverts by Adzuna category and by UK country and NUTS1 region. The number of job adverts over time is an indicator of the demand for labour. The Adzuna categories used do not correspond to Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) categories, so these values are not directly comparable with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Vacancy Survey.

Figure 8: Between 4 December and 11 December 2020, total online job adverts remained unchanged from the previous week at 74% of the level seen in the same week last year

Total weekly job adverts on Adzuna, UK, 4 January 2019 to 11 December 2020, percentage change from the same week in the previous year

Notes:

1. The observations were collected on a roughly weekly basis; however, before June 2020 they were not all observed at the same point in each week, leading to slightly irregular gaps between some observations.

2. These series have a small number of missing weeks, mostly in late 2019, and the latest is in January 2020. These values have been imputed using linear interpolation. The data points that have been imputed are clearly marked in the accompanying dataset.

3. Further category breakdowns are included in the Online job advert estimates dataset, and more details on the methodology can be found in Using Adzuna data to derive an indicator of weekly vacancies.

Data download

In the latest week, total online job adverts remained unchanged from the previous week at 74% of the level seen in the same week last year. Excluding the "unknown" category, in comparison with the previous week, the number of online job adverts decreased in 17 of the Adzuna categories, increased in nine categories and stayed the same in the remaining two categories.

"Transport, logistics and warehouse" saw the largest weekly decrease of 14 percentage points. However, it is the category with the highest volume of job adverts compared with the same week last year at 111%. This category is known to be highly seasonal, with increased variation in the number of online job adverts in the build up to the Christmas period. Online job adverts for "manufacturing" decreased by 12 percentage points compared with the previous week.

Online job adverts for "property", saw the largest weekly increase of seven percentage points, followed by "construction/trades" at six percentage points and "catering and hospitality", which saw a weekly increase of five percentage points – its highest level in three months when compared with the previous year. However, it is still only at 33% of the volume of job adverts seen at the same time last year and remains the lowest comparable volume of all the categories.

Please note the trends of all the categories discussed can be seen in the accompanying dataset.

Figure 9: Yorkshire and The Humber saw the largest comparable increase in weekly online job adverts when compared with the same week of the previous year, increasing by eight percentage points

Total weekly job adverts on Adzuna, UK, 4 January 2019 to 11 December 2020, percentage change from the same week in the previous year

Notes:

1. There is a level shift in the Northern Ireland series from 17 October 2019 because a large source of Northern Ireland job adverts were removed, and another level shift from 7 August 2020 because of a new source being included.

2. The October 2020 spike and most recent weekly increase in the Northern Ireland series should be treated with caution because of the increased coverage from a year ago.

Data download

In the latest week, Yorkshire and The Humber saw the largest weekly increase of eight percentage points when compared with the same week of the previous year, followed by Scotland at five percentage points. The East Midlands and North East both saw the largest weekly decreases of four percentage points.

Online job adverts for London remained similar to the previous week at around 60% of the level seen at the same time last year. It remains the region with the lowest volume of online job adverts compared with the same week in the previous year.

These figures are provided by Springboard, a provider of data on customer activity. They measure the volume of footfall compared with the same day the previous year at the overall level and across the categories of high streets, retail parks and shopping centres. For example, Sunday 13 December 2020 was compared with Sunday 8 December 2019.

Figure 10: In the week ending 13 December 2020, overall UK footfall was at 69% of the level seen at the same time last year, an increase of seven percentage points compared with the previous week’s footfall

Volume of footfall, percentage change from the same day the previous year, UK, 1 March to 13 December 2020

Source: Springboard and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy

Notes:

1. “PM announcement” refers to the advisory announcement on 16 March 2020 to avoid non-essential travel, bars, restaurants and other indoor leisure venues, and to work from home if possible.
2. The spike on Monday 24 August 2020 was caused by the comparison with 26 August 2019, which was bank holiday Monday with good weather. The bank holiday this year was a week later, on 31 August 2020.
3. From Thursday 5 November until Tuesday 1 December 2020 inclusively, England entered a period of national restrictions which, amongst other measures, asked the public to stay at home except for specific purposes and closed certain businesses and venues. This includes pubs, bars, dine-in restaurants and non-essential retail.
4. From Wednesday 2 December 2020, England introduced a regionally tiered approach to restrictions, where different tiers of measures applied in different parts of the country.

Download this image Figure 10: In the week ending 13 December 2020, overall UK footfall was at 69% of the level seen at the same time last year, an increase of seven percentage points compared with the previous week’s footfall

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Figure 10 shows that in the latest week (week ending 13 December 2020), the overall seven-day average footfall increased from the previous week by seven percentage points to 69% of the level seen the same day last year. This level of footfall is higher than the level in the week ending 1 November 2020, before England entered its period of national restrictions.

Footfall across all retail locations in the UK increased compared with the previous week. Footfall in high streets increased by eight percentage points to 60% and shopping centres increased by seven percentage points to 66%. Footfall in retail parks also saw a rise to 90% of the level seen last year, an increase of three percentage points from the previous week.

All retail locations saw a substantial decline on Sunday 13 December 2020, compared with the previous day. Overall footfall fell by eight percentage points over this period.

Figure 11: In the week ending Sunday 13 December 2020, weekly footfall had increased in every UK country and region except Wales, compared with last week

Overall volume of daily footfall, percentage change from the same day the previous year, UK, 1 March to 13 December 2020

Notes:

1. From Thursday 5 November until Tuesday 1 December 2020, England entered a period of national restrictions which, among other measures, asked the public to stay at home, except for specific purposes, and closed certain businesses and venues. This included pubs, bars, dine-in restaurants and non-essential retail.
2. From Wednesday 2 December 2020, England introduced a regionally tiered approach to restrictions, where different tiers of measures applied in different parts of the country.

Download this image Figure 11: In the week ending Sunday 13 December 2020, weekly footfall had increased in every UK country and region except Wales, compared with last week

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Figure 11 shows the volume of footfall in each English region and UK country compared with the same day the previous year. In the week ending 13 December 2020, footfall had increased across every English region and UK country compared with last week, except for Wales, which saw a decrease of nine percentage points to 62% of the level seen in the same week last year.

The decrease in footfall in Wales may be linked to the ongoing coronavirus regulations there, introduced on 4 December 2020. These measures include the closure of all pubs and restaurants at 6pm.

Northern Ireland saw an increase in footfall levels by 16 percentage points to 52% of the levels seen last year. This is the largest increase out of every UK country and region, although Northern Ireland's footfall level remains the lowest out of every UK country and region. The large increase coincides with the relaxation of additional coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions from Friday 11 December 2020, whereby various facilities, such as non-essential shops and restaurants, have been allowed to reopen under new regulations.

In the latest week (week ending 13 December 2020), the English region with the largest increase in footfall was South West England, which had increased by nine percentage points to 74% of the levels seen last year, followed by the East Midlands and South East England. These regions each increased by eight percentage points, to 77% and 67%, respectively. Many of the local areas in these regions are currently in Tier 2, which allows most businesses and venues to continue to operate in a coronavirus-secure manner.

Scotland's level of footfall increased by six percentage points from the previous week, and is now at 59% of the level seen last year. Scotland's increase may be linked to the easing of coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions across several areas of the country on 11 and 12 December 2020.

There was also a substantial increase in footfall on Saturday 12 December 2020, where Scotland's footfall was at 71% of the levels seen last year. This is an 18-percentage point increase from the previous Saturday, when these restrictions were still in place.

A full list of national restrictions is available for England from the Department of Health and Social Care, for Scotland from the Scottish Government, for Wales from the Welsh Government and for Northern Ireland from nidirect.

Road traffic in Great Britain

The Department for Transport (DfT) produces daily road traffic estimates using data from around 275 automatic traffic count sites across Great Britain covering all road types, which are published weekly.

The daily DfT estimates are indexed to the first week of February 2020 and the comparison is with the same day of the week. The data provided are useful as an indication of traffic change rather than actual traffic volumes. More information on the methods, quality and economic analysis for these indicators can be found in the methodology article.

On Monday 14 December 2020, total motor vehicle traffic was 11 percentage points lower than the first Monday in February 2020, and two percentage points higher than the previous week.

Traffic volumes for cars remained broadly stable compared with the previous week, with traffic 17 percentage points below levels seen in the first week of February 2020.

Light commercial vehicle and heavy vehicle traffic also remained broadly stable compared with the previous week, but traffic volumes of these vehicle categories are above levels seen in the first week of February 2020.

Other than heavy goods vehicles, traffic volumes in all vehicle categories remain slightly lower than before 5 November 2020, when national restrictions began in England.

Traffic camera activity

Traffic cameras are a valuable source for understanding the level of activity in towns and cities as well as changing patterns of mobility. The UK has thousands of publicly accessible traffic cameras with providers ranging from national agencies to local authorities. Further information on the methodology used to produce these data is available in our methodology article and Data Science Campus blog.

In the accompanying dataset, the following categories are available as non-seasonally adjusted, seasonally adjusted and trend data:

• cars

• motorbikes (only available for London and the North East)

• buses

• trucks

• vans

• pedestrians and cyclists

The categories are available for the following regions, which give a broad coverage across the UK and represent a range of different-sized settlements in urban and rural settings:

• Durham

• London

• Greater Manchester

• North East

• Northern Ireland

• Southend

• Reading

Figure 13: In the week ending 13 December 2020, average counts of traffic camera activity for all vehicle types increased substantially in Northern Ireland when compared with the previous week, but decreased in London

Traffic camera activity in selected areas, daily counts of cars, buses, pedestrians and cyclists, seasonally adjusted, March to December 2020, UK

Notes:

1. The regions shown here were selected to be representative of the regions available.

2. Traffic camera images capture the appearance of buses, but they give no indication of the number of passengers using public transport.

3. Northern Ireland introduced a two-week circuit breaker from Friday 27 November 2020, and introduced regulations from 11 December 2020.

4. From Thursday 5 November until Wednesday 2 December 2020, England entered a period of national restrictions  which, among other measures, asked the public to stay at home, except for specific purposes, and closed certain businesses and venues. This included pubs, bars, dine-in restaurants and non-essential retail.

5. From Wednesday 2 December 2020, England introduced a regionally tiered approach to restrictions, where different tiers of measures applied in different parts of the country.

In Northern Ireland in the latest week (week ending 13 December 2020), all categories of road traffic camera activity have increased compared with the previous week, with pedestrian and cyclist traffic increasing around 30% of levels seen the previous week, and car traffic increasing around 15%.

The large weekly increase can be explained by the additional coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions being relaxed from Friday 11 December 2020, where shops, hairdressers, restaurants, places of worship and hotels are among the places set to reopen under the new regulations.

In London, average counts of all traffic camera activity decreased to between 90% and 100% of levels compared with the previous week.

In Greater Manchester, counts of all traffic increased compared with the previous week. Pedestrians and cyclists increased by 11%, cars 4%, buses 3% and trucks by 7%.

These shipping indicators are based on counts of all vessels, cargo and tanker vessels and passenger vessels. As discussed in Faster indicators of UK economic activity: shipping, we expect the shipping indicators to be related to the import and export of goods.

Company incorporations

Incorporations are when a company is added to the Companies House register of limited companies. This can also include where an existing business applies to become a limited company, where it was not one before.

Faster indicator

A faster indicator provides insights into economic activity using close-to-real-time big data, administrative data sources, rapid response surveys or Experimental Statistics, which represent useful economic and social concepts.

Voluntary dissolution applications

A voluntary dissolution application is when a company applies to begin dissolution proceedings. As such, they effectively chose to be removed from the Companies House register. For a company to be eligible to voluntarily dissolve, it should not have completed any trading activity for a period of three months.

Detailed information on the data sources, quality and methodology of the different indicators included in this bulletin is available in the Coronavirus and the latest indicators of the UK economy and society methodology.

We will summarise any crucial updates to the quality or methodology in this section in the future.

End of EU exit transition period

After the transition period ends on 31 December 2020, the UK statistical system will continue to collect and produce our wide range of economic and social statistics. We are committed to continued alignment with international statistical standards, enabling comparability both over time and internationally and we will work with users of statistics to make sure they have the data they need to support the decisions they have to make.

Holiday period publication plans

Users should be aware that there will be a change to the publishing timetable for this bulletin over the forthcoming holiday period:

• On Wednesday 23 December 2020, a slim version of the bulletin will be published containing our Main points, Latest indicators at a glance and Data sections only; this release has been brought forward from Thursday 24 December 2020.

• There will no bulletin on Thursday 31 December 2020.

• On Thursday 7 January 2021, a slim version of the bulletin will be published containing our Main points, Latest indicators at a glance and Data sections only.

• From Thursday 14 January 2021, a full bulletin will be published.

Detailed information on the strengths and limitations of the different indicators included in this bulletin is available in the Coronavirus and the latest indicators of the UK economy and society methodology.

We will summarise any crucial updates or warnings in this section in the future.