Industry Indicators: May 23–29
Industry Indicators: May 23-29
iLevel Logistics presents intriguing data that offers a snapshot of notable industry changes and events during the week of May 23rd through May 29th.
Pandemic and employment, digital transformation, logistics real estate activity, drug and alcohol clearinghouse, cargo thefts over Memorial Day, road quality, chip shortage, back-to-normal, logistic executive surveys, broad band and package delivery surge.
Pandemic and employment
Source: Opportunity Insights
The chart demonstrates the severe impact of the pandemic on employment rates. The blue line captures the overall employment rate change, sinking markedly in April and May of 2020 then rising slowly thereafter – but net yet reaching pre-pandemic levels. The Retail and Transportation sector (red) exhibits a similar pattern but not as pronounced. By contrast, the pandemic’s impact on Leisure and Hospitality sector lingers, and after a year still appears far from pre-pandemic levels.
The pandemic also hit low wage workers the hardest (green). Employment has been slow to recover for all wage levels, but especially among low wage employees.
Supply Chain Digital Transformation
Source: Tools Group
Lots of talk about digitization and investments in new technologies. Here are some charts that reflect the thinking of more than 200 supply chain professionals on planning digital transformations.
For your company, what is driving supply chain planning digitial transformation?
What do you foresee as major problems for implementation of digital plans?
What are the key applications for the new technological investments?
Logistics real estate customer activity
Source: Prologis
An April Prologis research report showed notable logistic real estate customer activity. The IBI activity index - which reflects customer activity in warehousing, exhibited a sharp jump to 68. A reading of 50 or higher indicates growth. Prologis said the April increase represented increased throughput and indicated strong future demand.
Prologis also noted that vacancy rates fell by 10 basis points to 4.7% - from Q4 2020 to Q1 2021, nearly reaching pre-pandemic levels.
Q1 construction starts increased 25% annually, marking the highest quarterly reading since Prologis began tracking this measure. Heather Belfor, head of U.S. Research for Prologis concluded, “structural demand tailwinds, including e-commerce and resilient supply chains, mean that economic growth requires more logistic space than ever before.”
Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation
The April Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse showed the overwhelming number of positive truck driver drug tests this year – and in 2020 - were for marijuana, followed by cocaine, and then methamphetamine.
After a violation, drivers must enroll in a return-to-duty (RTD) program and pass a drug test before they can return to driving. Since January of 2020, 69,565 drivers tested positive – at least 1 violation. As of 5/1/2021, 12,055 have passed a RTD drug test. A total of 57,510 drivers remain in the RTD prohibited status.
Cargo thefts over Memorial Day weekend
Source: OverDrive
CargoNet analyzed data from 2016 to 2020 for the Thursday before Memorial Day to the following Wednesday. There were 143 cargo theft incidents reported, averaging 29 events per year. Most thefts occurred on Friday (20%), Sunday (16%) and Monday (15%).
The Best and Worst States for Road Quality
Source: CCJ
Zutobi, an online driver’s education resource, examined the quality of state roads using the International Roughness Index and the rate of highway deaths. Overall scores range from 0 worst to 10 best.
Chip Shortage
Source: SupplyChainBrain
Recent chip shortages have caused many problems in the new and used vehicle markets. Chips account for an increasing percentage of total car costs and producers now wait much longer before securing their chip orders – the average time from order to getting the chip increased to 4 months.
Chip shortage will persist
source: Gartner
Gartner expects chip shortages to be pushed out into the second and third quarter of 2022.
Back to Normal?
Source: CNN
According to CNN’s Back-to-Normal Index, which is comprised of 37 national and 7 state-level indicators, the U.S. economy is now operating at 90% of where it was in early March 2020.
The index can be applied to each state as well.
Various measures of leisure activity however remain depressed.
From Politico, a comparison of travel metrics from 2019 to 2020.
Broadband and package delivery surge in 2020
Source: Politico
Two graphs that illustrate how Americans changed during 2020. Shifting to remote learning and work, Americans’ demand for upstream capacity – the bandwidth needed to send documents or participate in video conferencing – skyrocketed. Similarly, because of complications from Covid-19 exposure, Americans turned to online shopping. Hence, the volume of package deliveries by the U.S. postal service increased – as it did for other carriers liked Amazon, FedEx, and UPS. In short, empty stores but full delivery trucks.
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