Australia

We’ve added the hourly pedestrian count for four thoroughfares in central Sydney: Park Street, Bridge Street, Market Street and Elizabeth Street. The city collects this data through automatic sensors. 

In the chart below, we aggregated the hourly series into a daily average, then smoothed it into a 7-day rolling sum, and finally rebased it on 100 for the pre-pandemic date of 14^th February 2020 to compare foot traffic trends over the following years.

Foot traffic has only caught up to pre-pandemic levels on Park Street. 

Japan

We’ve complemented the new orders dataset from the Japan Machine Tool Builders Association with sub-sectoral components from the machinery and equipment industry (which accounts for the vast majority of total domestic new orders). 

In the chart below, we display the year-on-year contributions of subsectors from aircraft to motor vehicles. In total, after a 2021-22 boom, new domestic orders are shrinking year on year, with the various subsectors broadly tending to move in unison through the economic cycle. 

China

We’ve added two series related to residential construction: one measuring investment in housing units of less than 90 square meters in size, the other for housing with floor space of 144 square meters or more. 

Investment in smaller housing units had been outpacing construction of larger homes between 2011 to 2016, but then the trend reversed until the outbreak of the pandemic. Today, investment in both categories is shrinking, though the downturn is more acute for smaller housing – with investment in this category down more than 15 percent year-on-year.