I’ve published an update on the local impact of the pandemic to date, using our bank spending data. We now have six months of data, on a weekly basis, about life in lockdown. https://twitter.com/tortoise/status/1318816816089731072

There's a big lesson here from Leicester: our sample suggests businesses there have had *double* the losses of the average business - 26% less revenue over 6 months. Partly because Lockdown I was so awful there - but also the thump of Lockdown II took them right back to May.

It is quite hard to discern a big hit to the city of Manchester, by contrast, from the aggregates. Or even much in Bolton (which had tougher restrictions)...

...but geographical data disguises huge swings in how we spend money. The fact people are still spending inside Manchester hides big changes in how we spend. For example: areas where there was historically a lot more custom than average with people living nearby did much better..

...there was a switch from offline to online. Hoxton and East Shoreditch is the ward where Amazon is based. The West End is the two wards containing the, uh, West End in London (Oxford Street etc)

...and spending at grocery shops is still massively up.

So the big picture is mixed: we're back to normal spending levels on a weekly basis, *but* we're spending more on grocery, more online, and more local. There are *big* distributional consequences there.