Episode 8 of Localogy’s “This Week in Local” podcast tackles two data-focused, post-pandemic issues on the minds of Localogy analysts Mike Boland and Charles Laughlin, who co-host this podcast.
The first discussion point, led by Mike, touched on new data from Yelp showing brisk small-business formation. The second point, led by Charles, deals with recent data from Foursquare. The data seemed to debunk some myths about the return to the office.
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Part 1: Fire-tested SMBs
The Yelp data Mike raised showed that 637,590 new businesses opened across the U.S. in 2022.
“In 2022, we saw a record number of SMBs open in the US,” Mike said. “In turn, you could argue that it is potentially a leading indicator for economic health.”
This ignited a discussion of how the SMBs emerging in the wave of the pandemic might be different, given the rapid technology adoption that took place during the heaviest pandemic restrictions so SMBs could continue operating in a contactless environment.
“Is this new batch of SMBs going to be inherently savvier and fire-tested?” Mike asks on the episode.
Part 2: Joining from My Ski Lodge in Utah
The second issue was led by Charles. It involved findings from Foursquare that contrasted survey data and real-time location data that shows actual foot traffic. The data was related to how often workers are really going into the office. Foursquare found a big difference between the reported frequency of workers going it to the office and the actual frequency. Foursquare measured the latter using foot traffic.
And on how many workers really moved from city to country during the pandemic, which was a big Covid-era business media theme. It turns out that only 11% of workers did so, according to Foursquare.
This feels lower than the pandemic media narrative of knowledge workers fleeing New York City for the country suggested.
The hosts were not surprised by this low figure. They believe that the media narrative was likely overhyped. And perhaps it was driven by stories of top execs leaving locked-down urban areas for “ski lodges in Utah.”
“A lot of times the most senior people kind of lived out that…exciting lifestyle choice that came out of the work-from-home movement,” Charles said in the episode. “Which was to move to a ski lodge or move to Florida from New York or to Hawaii and do the whole work-from-home thing from an amazing place. I think it turned out that that was the CFO and the CEO and the C suite doing this more so than the assistant VP of marketing. This was kind of fun and interesting, but maybe an Inconvenient truth for the C suite in some cases.”
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