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China’s big consumer market isn’t rebounding to pre-pandemic levels just yet
Tourists visit ice sculptures in Harbin, Heilongjiang province on New Year’s Day 2023.
China News Service | VCG | Getty Images
BEIJING — It’s going to take time for Chinese consumers to really start spending again, despite China’s abrupt shift toward reopening.
About a month after Guangzhou city resumed in-store dining, local coffee shop owner Timothy Chong said revenue was recovering — to 50% of normal levels.
“In late December, customer flow gradually normalized, with a slight upward trend, but [a recovery in] business volume still needs to wait,” he said in Chinese, translated by CNBC.
He expects it will take at least three or four months before revenue can return to normal. For the past six months, revenue had dropped to 30% of typical levels, Chong said. He said Bem Bom Coffee’s first store opened in late 2019, followed by a second store and a coffee academy in August 2021.
China’s retail sales were down slightly for 2022 as of November, official data showed. Consumption has lagged overall economic growth since the pandemic began nearly three years ago.
For the year ahead, Bain partner Derek Deng kept a lid on expectations. “The hope is we at least get back to the first quarter of 2022 level,” he said, noting that was just before the Shanghai lockdown.
Retail sales for the first three months of 2022 were up by about 3.3% from a year ago, but had slowed to a decline of 0.7% for the first half of the year, according to Wind Information.
A return to 2021 — when retail sales rebounded by 12.5%— would be an optimistic scenario, Deng said. “I don’t think people are seeing that as sort of the base case, mostly because the macro factors are actually less favorable compared to 2021.”
The bulk of Chinese household wealth is tied up in real estate, a one-time hot market that’s slumped in the last year. Mainland Chinese stock markets dropped in 2022 for the first time in four years. Exports, a driver of China’s growth, have started to decline in the last few months as global demand wanes.
Deng also noted fears of a second Covid wave, the highly contagious XBB omicron subvariant coming in from overseas and geopolitical uncertainties.
“I think that has also impact on people’s perceptions on their disposable income, or whether they need to save to weather all those uncertainties,” he said.
Chinese consumers’ penchant to save reached record highs last year, according to People’s Bank of China surveys.
Hopes for a travel rebound
Analysts are closely watching the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday for indications on consumer sentiment. The travel season for China’s big holiday runs this year from around Jan. 7 to Feb. 15. — with about 2.1 billion trips expected, according to official estimates.
That’s twice what it was last year, and 70% of 2019 levels, China’s Ministry of Transport said Friday. It noted most of the trips will likely be for visiting family, while just 10% will be for leisure or business travel.
This year, many more Chinese will finally be able to travel overseas. The country is restoring the ability of Chinese citizens to go abroad for leisure, after tightly controlling the mainland borders for almost three years. On Sunday, China also formally removed quarantine requirements for inbound travelers.
However, Chinese travel overseas is unlikely to pick up until around the next public holiday in early April, said Chen Xin, head of China leisure and transport research at UBS Securities.
By that time, people will have been able to process their passport applications, while the number of international flights may have recovered to 50% or 60% of 2019 levels, Chen said. He added that measures such as pre-flight virus testing requirements to visit certain countries could be relaxed in a few months.
Within China, Chen expects travel will get another boost after February when business trips pick up, bringing hotel business back to 2019 levels by the end of the year. That’s based on an industry metric that measures revenue per available room.
Not everyone is going out
China’s big city streets are getting busier as the first wave of infections passes.
But it’s mostly younger and middle-aged people who are out and about again, UBS’s Chen said, noting that older people might be more cautious about venturing out.
After a gradual rollback in Covid controls, Chinese authorities last month suddenly did away with the bulk of the country’s virus testing and contact tracing measures. However, vaccination rates for China’s elderly have been relatively low. Only domestically made vaccines are generally available in China.
Bain’s Deng is also watching whether consumers will start to go out more. During the first three quarters of 2022, about 56% of consumer spending was at home — the reverse of the pre-pandemic trend, he said.
If the share of out-of-home spending can go up by even a few percentage points, that will affect how malls and restaurants consider their business strategy, especially for delivery services, Deng said.
In the last 18 months, Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com shortened the delivery window for many products from next-day to just one hour. That’s through its partnership with Dada, now majority owned by JD.
Figures from the company showed that for the Dec. 16 to Jan. 1 period, the one-hour delivery platform saw sales for vegetables, beef and mutton roughly double from a year ago. Sales of refrigerators soared by 700%, while flat-screen TV sales jumped tenfold from a year ago, according to the data.
Air travel complaints up nearly 270% above pre-pandemic levels
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Air travel service complaints jumped nearly 270% from pre-pandemic levels in June 2019, according to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) air travel consumer report released Friday.
The DOT received over 5,800 service complaints in June, a nearly 270% increase from the over 1,500 received in the same month in 2019. According to the report, there were over 28,500 complaints to the DOT in the first six months of 2022, a jump of 27.8% from the same period in 2021 and more than in all of 2019.
The DOT reported that from May to June, the number of service complaints went up nearly 35%. More than half of the complaints received in June, about 58%, were against U.S. carriers.
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Over 1,600 service complaints in June – nearly 29% – were related to flight cancelations, delays, or other deviations from the carriers’ schedules, the DOT said. About 24% of the June complaints concerned refunds.
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ALGT | ALLEGIANT TRAVEL CO. | 98.11 | -2.36 | -2.35% |
| ALK | ALASKA AIR GROUP INC. | 44.89 | -1.31 | -2.84% |
| JBLU | JETBLUE AIRWAYS CORP. | 8.03 | -0.35 | -4.18% |
| UAL | UNITED AIRLINES HOLDINGS INC. | 36.57 | -1.70 | -4.44% |
| LUV | SOUTHWEST AIRLINES CO. | 37.53 | -1.02 | -2.65% |
| AAL | AMERICAN AIRLINES GROUP INC. | 13.74 | -0.68 | -4.72% |
| DAL | DELTA AIR LINES INC. | 32.68 | -1.31 | -3.85% |
| HA | HAWAIIAN HOLDINGS INC. | 15.41 | -0.73 | -4.52% |
| ULCC | FRONTIER GROUP HOLDINGS | 12.90 | -0.56 | -4.16% |
Airlines have continued to be plagued with flight disruptions caused by bad weather, staffing shortages, and air traffic control issues this month. They have been working to combat the disruptions by taking steps such as boosting hiring and training and adjusting flight and crew schedules.
The DOT ranked Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Hawaiian Airlines as the three marketing carriers with the highest on-time arrival rates in June. The three marketing carriers with the lowest were Allegiant Air, JetBlue, and Frontier, according to the DOT.
OVER 3,100 FLIGHTS DELAYED, CANCELED ON TUESDAY
Airlines canceled about 3% of domestic flights in June, compared to 1.6% in June 2021 and 2.1% in June 2019. The number of flights operated in June was about 86% of the number in June 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the DOT.
Flight cancelations show on a departure board at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as a winter storm moves into the area Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Ben Gray / AP Newsroom)
Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and Frontier had the lowest marketing carrier rates of canceled flights in June, while American, Delta, and United had the highest, according to the DOT. United noted to FOX Business that it had the lowest June cancelation rate (3.5%) among the three large carriers.
“Delta is focused on strong operational performance, including recovering quickly and resiliently when factors like weather and air traffic control programs affect our operation. Of the more than 20,000 Delta and Delta Connection operated during a recent weekend in August, there were only 15 cancelations worldwide,” a spokesperson for Delta told FOX Business.
PHOTOS FROM ALASKA AIRLINES FLIGHT SHOW METAL PANELING BREAKING AWAY FROM PLANE
“Southwest Airlines has enplaned the most passengers among U.S. airlines while leading all marketing air carriers in overall customer satisfaction for June and year to date, as defined by the DOT’s report,” Southwest Airlines said in a statement to FOX Business. “We are proud the data reflects the dedicated work of our Employees to deliver our legendary Southwest Hospitality each day.”
A Southwest Airlines commercial aircraft approaches to land at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California Jan. 18, 2022. (REUTERS/Mike Blake / Reuters)
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sent letters to 10 U.S. airline CEOs earlier in August, calling the increase in flight disruptions across the country “unacceptable.”
Airlines for American, a trade association representing Alaska Airlines, American, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue, and others, told FOX Business airlines “strive to provide the highest level of customer service” and “want travelers to have a safe, seamless and positive travel experience.” Airlines are working with stakeholders to overcome a tight labor market and other challenges as they emerge from the height of the pandemic, the trade association said.
The International Air Transport Association, Frontier, Allegiant, JetBlue and American did not respond to FOX Business’ request for comment by the time of publication.
‘We know people are anxious’ to return to pre-pandemic life
WASHINGTON — Asked at a Wednesday briefing of the White House pandemic response team about when Americans could expect life to return to normal, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky offered a somewhat cryptic but revealing response.
“We know people are anxious,” Walensky said.
Asked which anxiety she was referring to, a Walensky spokesperson told Yahoo News: “This comment was made in response to a question on if people can change their habits for gathering in groups or going to bars and restaurants. Dr. Walensky recognizes that many people are anxious to get back to these activities and no longer have COVID-19 disrupt their daily lives.”
Indeed, a recent poll by YouGov for Yahoo News found 46 percent of Americans saying that society needs to learn to live with the virus and return to pre-pandemic normalcy. A recent Monmouth poll found even more dramatic results, with 70 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement that “we just need to get on with our lives.”
There is, to be sure, plenty of anxiety to go around: about catching COVID-19, which continues to kill more than 2,000 people per day, but also about what public health officials envision for the future. Resistance to masking in schools is growing even among progressives, amid a broader recognition that while caution may continue to be justified, Americans are becoming increasingly impatient.
Walensky described herself as “cautiously optimistic,” but offered nothing like an endorsement of returning to normal that governors who met with President Biden earlier this week have been hoping for.
“Milder does not mean mild,” Walensky said, referencing the fact that the Omicron tends to cause more mild sickness. But close to 40 percent of eligible Americans are unvaccinated. And of the fully vaccinated, 60 percent have not had a booster shot, which epidemiologists say is necessary to offer the highest level of protection against the coronavirus.
“We really do have look to our hospitalization rates, and our death rates, to look to when it’s time to lift some of these mitigation efforts,” Walensky said in explaining why her agency’s guidance on masking remains cautious, and why the recent drop in cases is not being met with the level of enthusiasm some believe it deserves.
Hospitals are full in many parts of the country, and COVID-19 continues to exact a far greater toll in the United States than in other developed nations. “We’ve normalized a very high death toll in the U.S.,” Dartmouth public health scholar Anne Sosin told the New York Times.
The pandemic has frustrated previous attempts at reopening with new variants that have pushed a true reopening — masks off, people back in offices, schools open and restaurants full — ever further into the future.
Last spring, the CDC lifted indoor masking guidance for vaccinated people, a move some thought was premature. Then, in early July, President Biden all but declared independence from the virus, symbolically delivered on Independence Day during a party celebrating first respondents. That too was seen as a rash move by some.
But the late summer saw a surge of new cases fueled by the Delta variant. Just as it subsided, Omicron came along. Even though that wave is now subsiding too, public health officials are reluctant to declare victory. Speaking at the White House briefing with Walensky, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s top medical adviser, reminded Americans that even the recent drop in cases could signal a mere lull before yet another variant comes along.
Which could mean that, whether people are anxious about the coronavirus or about relegating the disease to the past, they may have to live in the current state of uncertainty. “We have to be honest that we don’t know,” Fauci said of the pandemic’s ultimate trajectory. But, he added, “We believe we are now going in the right direction.”
How are vaccination rates affecting the latest COVID surge? Check out this explainer from Yahoo Immersive to find out.
U.S. weekly jobless claims less than expected as labor market returns to pre-pandemic self
Initial claims for unemployment insurance rose last week but held at levels consistent with how the job market looked before the Covid-19 pandemic devastated the U.S. jobs picture, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
First-time filings for the week ended Nov. 27 totaled 222,000, less than the 240,000 Wall Street expected. That was higher than the 194,000 from the previous week, but that total, the lowest since 1969, was revised even lower from the initial 199,000 reported.
The totals are the product of heavy seasonal adjustments, though the unadjusted number was actually lower, at 211,896.
The report comes amid signs of an increasingly tight labor market, with workers leaving their positions for new jobs at the highest level on record and with hiring persisting at a brisk pace.
In addition to the brightened outlook for initial claims, continuing claims fell by another 107,000 and are now below 2 million for the first time since the early days of the pandemic. The last time continuing claims, which run a week behind the headline number, were lower than the current 1.96 million was March 14, 2020.
Virginia and Texas combined to see more than 15,000 fewer claims filed for the week, according to unadjusted data.
Thursday’s report comes a day ahead of the closely watched nonfarm payrolls count from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That tally is expected to show an addition of 573,000 new jobs in November, following a gain of 531,000 in October. The unemployment rate is expected to edge lower to 4.5%.
Black Friday shopping in stores drops from pre-pandemic levels
Traffic at retail stores on Black Friday dropped 28.3 percent compared with 2019 levels, as shoppers shifted more of their spending online and kicked off their shopping earlier in the year, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions.
Traffic was up 47.5 percent compared with year-ago levels, Sensormatic said.
This time in 2020, many shoppers stayed at home due to fears around the coronavirus pandemic and as retailers operated on somewhat reduced hours.
“It’s clear shoppers are shopping earlier this season, just as they did last season,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting at Sensormatic. He added that the two main reasons shoppers are spreading out their holiday purchases are ongoing concerns about Covid and worries about the supply chain.
The peak time for Black Friday shopping in stores was 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., similar to trends in past years, Sensormatic said. Black Friday is still predicted to be the busiest in-store shopping day of the season, according to Sensormatic.
On Thanksgiving day, visits to brick-and-mortar stores cratered 90.4 percent from 2019 levels, Sensormatic found. Retailers including Target, Walmart and Best Buy opted to keep their doors closed to customers on the holiday. Target has said it will be a permanent shift.
Field said that shopper traffic on Black Friday was closest to returning to 2019 levels in the South, followed by the Midwest and then the West and Northeast. He doesn’t believe mounting fears around the new Covid variant, omicron, had any impact on consumers’ behavior on the day.
“If you start seeing outbreaks in the U.S., the thing that I think would drive [traffic down] would be if governments and communities start locking down again,” Field said. “Otherwise, I think the trends will be very similar to what we expect them to be.”
Black Friday online spending falls from 2020 levels
Online, retailers rang up $8.9 billion in sales on Black Friday, down from the record of about $9 billion spent on the Friday after Thanksgiving a year earlier, according to data from Adobe Analytics. It marked the first time ever that growth reversed from the prior year, Adobe said. Adobe analyzes more than one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, with over 100 million items in 18 different product categories.
On Thanksgiving day, consumers spent $5.1 billion on the internet, flat from year-ago levels, Adobe said.
The numbers provide even greater evidence that the holiday season has been stretched out as more people began their shopping as early as October. Retailers have been spreading out their promotional offers, too. According to a survey from the National Retail Federation, the retail industry’s leading trade group, 61% of consumers had already started purchasing holiday gifts before Thanksgiving.
“Shoppers are being strategic in their gift shopping, buying much earlier in the season and being flexible about when they shop to make sure they get the best deals,” said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.
Adobe is forecasting e-commerce sales on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, to be in between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion.
Shoppers can expect to find a variety of items out of stock, however, as supply chain complications have snarled inventory levels for some companies.
According to Adobe, out-of-stock messages on retailers’ websites are up 124 percent through Friday versus pre-pandemic levels. Appliances, electronics, housekeeping supplies and home and garden items have the largest stock-out rates, Adobe said.
NRF expects holiday sales during November and December to rise between 8.5 and 10.5 percent, for a total of between $843.4 billion and $859 billion of sales, which would set a record for year-over-year growth.
Black Friday shopping in stores drops 28% from pre-pandemic levels
Shoppers with bags from various stores stand next to each other as Black Friday sales begin at The Outlet Shoppes of the Bluegrass in Simpsonville, Kentucky, November 26, 2021.
Jon Cherry | Reuters
Traffic at retail stores on Black Friday dropped 28.3% compared with 2019 levels, as Americans shifted more of their spending online and kicked off their shopping earlier in the year, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions.
Traffic was up 47.5% compared with year-ago levels, Sensormatic said. This time in 2020, many shoppers stayed at home due to fears around the coronavirus pandemic and as retailers operated on somewhat reduced hours.
“It’s clear shoppers are shopping earlier this season, just as they did last season,” said Brian Field, senior director of global retail consulting at Sensormatic. He added that the two main reasons shoppers are spreading out their holiday purchases are ongoing concerns about Covid and worries about the supply chain.
The peak time for Black Friday shopping in stores was 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., similar to trends in past years, Sensormatic said. Black Friday is still predicted to be the busiest in-store shopping day of the season, according to Sensormatic.
On Thanksgiving day, visits to brick-and-mortar stores cratered 90.4% from 2019 levels, Sensormatic found. Retailers including Target, Walmart and Best Buy opted to keep their doors closed to customers on the holiday. Target has said it will be a permanent shift.
Field said that shopper traffic on Black Friday was closest to returning to 2019 levels in the South, followed by the Midwest and then the West and Northeast. He doesn’t believe mounting fears around the new Covid variant, omicron, had any impact on consumers’ behavior on the day.
“If you start seeing outbreaks in the U.S., the thing that I think would drive [traffic down] would be if governments and communities start locking down again,” Field said. “Otherwise, I think the trends will be very similar to what we expect them to be.”
Black Friday online spending falls from 2020 levels
Online, retailers rang up $8.9 billion in sales on Black Friday, down from the record of about $9 billion spent on the Friday after Thanksgiving a year earlier, according to data from Adobe Analytics. It marked the first time ever that growth reversed from the prior year, Adobe said. Adobe analyzes more than one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, with over 100 million items in 18 different product categories.
On Thanksgiving day, consumers spent $5.1 billion on the internet, flat from year-ago levels, Adobe said.
The numbers provide even greater evidence that the holiday season has been stretched out as more Americans began their shopping as early as October. Retailers have been spreading out their promotional offers, too. According to a survey from the National Retail Federation, the retail industry’s leading trade group, 61% of consumers had already started purchasing holiday gifts before Thanksgiving.
“Shoppers are being strategic in their gift shopping, buying much earlier in the season and being flexible about when they shop to make sure they get the best deals,” said Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights.
Adobe is forecasting e-commerce sales on Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day of the year, to be in between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion.
Shoppers can expect to find a variety of items out of stock, however, as supply chain complications have snarled inventory levels for some companies.
According to Adobe, out-of-stock messages on retailers’ websites are up 124% through Friday versus pre-pandemic levels. Appliances, electronics, housekeeping supplies and home and garden items have the largest stock-out rates, Adobe said.
Thanksgiving challenges airlines as US travel nears pre-pandemic levels | US news
Maliha Aziz was understandably nervous about her 19 November trip from St Louis, Missouri, to her native city of Karachi, Pakistan, for her nephew’s wedding.
Aziz, a former principal of an Islamic Sunday school in St Louis, and her husband traveled to three weddings over the summer and experienced numerous flights delays and cancelations.
On a Friday in June, they were stuck at a gate at the St Louis airport for more than two hours and missed a rehearsal dinner in Omaha. Then while at the wedding, Aziz received a text informing her that the airline had canceled their return flight and rebooked them for a flight more than 24 hours later.
“None of those were pleasant trips,” said Aziz, 61, who lives in a St Louis suburb. “Even simple trips, when they should not have any problems, either they did not have enough crew to fly the plane, or the plane is there but they don’t have enough staffing, or the luggage is in the plane, and it can’t come out because they don’t have enough staffing.”
Aziz’s summer travel experience and worries about Thanksgiving – she is flying back to the US on 28 November – are not unique among the tens of millions of people hoping to see friends and family for the annual holiday.
That’s because while people are expected to again travel at levels similar to a pre-pandemic Thanksgiving, airlines are still contending with staffing shortages, which could lead to additional flight cancelations.
“It doesn’t really matter if a travel disruption is coming from a lack of staffing or shortage of routes or weather, it’s still something that is very frustrating for customers,” said Lindsey Roeschke, travel and hospitality analyst for the Morning Consult, a market research firm.
In spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, Thanksgiving flight bookings in the United States are up 78% from 2020 and 3.2% from 2019, according to an Adobe Digital Economy Index report published earlier this month.
“When it is busy, it’s very possible that [flights] will be over capacity – and that means the possibility of things going wrong is very high,” said Narendra Khatri, principal of Insubuy, a travel insurance company.
Over the Halloween weekend, American Airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights because of weather and staffing problems. In letters to employees, David Seymour, chief operating officer of the airline, described the weekend as a “brief irregular ops period” and said that “on the schedule front, we’ve ensured that November and December are built to meet customer demand and that they are fully supportable by our staffing”.
Southwest Airlines also canceled hundreds of flights over an October weekend.
Both airlines have since offered staff increased pay to work over Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
A union representing American Airlines flight attendants accepted an offer for 150% pay to fly during peak holiday periods and an additional 150% pay for attendants who do not call in sick between 15 November and 2 January.
But a union representing American Airlines pilots rejected an offer for 50% additional pay on peak travel days during the holiday season because of the pilots’ frustrations with the airline’s scheduling system, among other issues.
When weather forces a cancelation, the airline has struggled to fix the schedule, which has spiraled into further cancelations, said Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for Allied Pilots Association, the union for the airline’s pilots.
The union would like to see the airline allow pilots more flexibility to swap flights so that when a pilot’s flight from St Louis to Dallas is canceled, a pilot already in Texas can pick up that pilot’s next flight from Dallas. That often can’t happen because of issues in the information technology system and limits on how much a pilot can fly each month, Tajer said.
An American Airlines spokesperson declined a request for an interview.
“This recovery has just really pulled back the covers on the infrastructure problems at American Airlines,” said Tajer, who is also a pilot. “We know where the solutions are – they probably have solutions – but they are not even willing to talk about them.”
In spite of the uncertainty, not all analysts predict that Thanksgiving will be a mess.
In the wake of the Halloween weekend cancelations, Seymour reassured staff that almost 1,800 flight attendants had returned from a leave of absence and that the airline would hire 600 new flight attendants by the end of December.
Mike Malik, chief marketing officer at Cirium, an aviation data firm, attributes the airlines’ October meltdowns to the fact that some companies “wound down too fast” when air traffic slowed. As people have again begun traveling, they are still working through difficulties in trying to meet that demand, he said.
“The hits that have been taken in the last month or so, the airlines have adjusted for that, and I think they are very much geared up for Thanksgiving,” said Malik.
Ajay Jain, a 23-year-old software engineer, also has confidence in American Airlines despite the recent issues. He follows the industry closely through social media and websites such as the Points Guy and has seven flights booked with the airline before the end of the year, with the goal of achieving Gold status for 2022, meaning he would receive free upgrades.
He has flown about 30 times since he started traveling again after being fully vaccinated against Covid-19 and has not had any flights canceled. But in May, he missed an American Airlines flight from Austin to Dallas when an airline reservation system operated by Sabre, a technology company, went down.
Jain was able to catch a flight an hour later, but other passengers’ plans were more disrupted. Jain said he explained to some what had happened, that it wasn’t American Airlines’ fault, and they calmed down.
That hasn’t always been the case during the pandemic – and the hectic holiday scene at airports could prove especially volatile. Passengers have yelled at and assaulted flight attendants when asked to put their mask on. Others have spent hours on the phone trying to rebook cancelled flights.
In the end Aziz, the former Sunday school principal, and her husband made it to Karachi without any problems. They were looking forward to the wedding, even though it would have only about 200 people – compared with more than 700 for her Pakistani family’s weddings in non-Covid times. Before their return flight 28 November, they must figure out where to get a Covid test, as is required for passengers entering the US.
“Praying we won’t miss our flight from Chicago to [St Louis],” Aziz texted from Pakistan.
Manhattan rents are climbing back to pre-pandemic levels
Over the past 18 months, as the pandemic wreaked havoc on the Manhattan rental market, landlords offered steep discounts on properties. Taking those cuts into account, the median rental price for all apartments in Manhattan rose to $3,382 in October, up 18% from a year earlier, according to a report from brokerage firm Douglas Elliman and appraisal firm Miller Samuel.
“Prices are not quite back, but very close to being back to where they were pre-pandemic,” said Jonathan Miller, president and CEO of Miller Samuel.
The median monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment was $3,400 in October, up 11% from last year, while a two-bedroom was $5,158, up 20% from a year ago, according to the report.
“The upward trajectory began in early spring with vaccine adoption as the city started to see inbound migration with institutions and companies reopening,” said Miller.
In the upper end of the market, prices for some categories of apartments are already above pre-pandemic levels, according to the report.
“The higher end of the market is rebounding more quickly and more rapidly,” Miller said.
When looking at rent increases for “doorman” properties, which skew higher-end and more expensive, versus “non-doorman” buildings, there is a significant gap.
The median rent for apartments in doorman buildings, inclusive of landlord discounts, was $4,263, up 25% from last year, Miller said. Prices are even 8% above their pre-pandemic levels from two years ago.
But the median rent for apartments in non-doorman buildings, inclusive of discounts, was $2,560, only up 7% year-over-year — and that was the first annual increase in 18 months, said Miller. Rents in these buildings are still down 11% from October 2019.
And rents are rising even more quickly for expensive loft apartments in Manhattan. The median rent for lofts has more than doubled since last year, according to the report, with the median rent of $5,000 last year, rising to $10,600 a month in October.
Miller said one of the main reasons for the polarization in performance between high-end rental buildings and lower-end ones is that the economic damage caused by the pandemic was much more punishing for lower-wage workers than for workers in the middle and upper income tiers.
Throughout the Manhattan market the newer, higher-end, properties are seeing steeper price increases as demand returns, said Miller. And it’s a trend that is expected to continue, he said.
“There has been a release of pent-up demand that came with a greater perception of safety and activity that is drawing inbound migration from all over the country,” he said. “Now with the relaxation of the Covid travel ban, we expect an uptick of international demand in the coming months. The next leg up will be early next year when corporate America comes back and people return to work in large numbers.”
New York Edges Closer to Prepandemic Life, as City Workers Return
Henry Garrido, executive director of the city’s largest public union, District Council 37, said he has repeatedly asked the mayor to push back the return-to-work date, but has yet to get a response. If the city moves ahead, his union will consider its legal options, he said.
New York is not the first city to mandate workers to return to the office full-time. The City of Houston, which has 22,000 office workers, brought them back full time over the summer, according to Mary Benton, a spokeswoman for the city. Chicago’s 5,500 office workers returned to the office five days a week in late spring, with some teleworking exceptions.
New York State workers were scheduled to return full time to the office earlier this week, but Gov. Kathy Hochul has pushed that back to Oct. 12; the state’s roughly 130,000 workers will be required to be vaccinated or tested weekly.
Mr. Garrido said he is concerned about workers’ ability to maintain social distancing, and he does not understand the need to bring people back to the office who are performing well while working from home.
“To me, this is crazy,” Mr. Garrido said in an interview. “Because at this point, there’s a new reality.”
Harry Nespoli, chairman of the Municipal Labor Committee, an umbrella organization of unions that includes uniformed personnel, said his organization met with city officials last Wednesday and warned them that if the mayor imposed a more robust vaccine mandate that did not include a testing option, it would take legal action.
Scientific studies show that the vaccination has prevented serious illness and death, but Mr. Nespoli said he was just voicing the concerns of his members.