Meanwhile, data show that mobility in residential areas is still 22% higher than early this year - even if people are freer than ever to go out of their homes. Restaurants, too, continue to have a hard time attracting customers. If you happen to visit malls lately, you’d perhaps agree that many still feel rather empty, devoid of the usual throngs of mallgoers. But this was the biggest shift so far: mobility changes at public places and residential areas have essentially stagnated - as though settling at an equilibrium.Īs of October 23, mobility at retail and recreation areas is still 46% lower than early this year, even as malls have opened their doors for longer hours. There was, to be sure, a rise in mobility in May right before ECQ was lifted.

They’ve continued to hunker down in their homes. All data are expressed as percent changes from the baseline mobility data (from January 3 to February 6, 2020).įigure 1 shows that despite the July lifting of Metro Manila’s strict lockdown (also called enhanced community quarantine or ECQ), Filipinos haven’t returned all that much to public places. The graphs below show the data for the Philippines. The aggregate, anonymized mobility data can be freely downloaded from Google to monitor changes in people’s movements to and from residential areas, groceries and pharmacies, parks, workplaces, retail and recreation areas, and transit stations.

This has since produced a valuable dataset that can, among other purposes, serve as a barometer of economic activity absent real-time economic statistics - the collection of which by governments tends to proceed at a glacial pace. Since the beginning of the pandemic Google has tracked people’s movements through mobile phone usage (at least people who haven’t turned off their phones’ Location History feature). Until the pandemic is contained and consumer confidence is restored, no solid economic recovery can be expected to occur. This, despite the loosening of quarantine restrictions in past months.Īt the same time, government data show that manufacturing production, net sales, and capacity utilization are still far from returning to normal. While the rest of ASEAN is fast returning to pre-pandemic levels of mobility, Filipinos are still largely avoiding public places and staying at home. Google’s mobility data, for instance, allow us to keep track of people’s movements during the pandemic. Grim though they look, these forecasts are supported by some leading indicators. The International Monetary Fund foresees a 8.3% contraction of gross domestic product or GDP the Asian Development Bank 7.3% and the World Bank 6.9% (9.9% at worst). Various think tanks predict that the Philippine economy will suffer one of the worst downturns in ASEAN by yearend.

Google mobility data