Melbourne hit hard by extended lockdown.

 

A research firm’s analysis of people movement data in Australia’s capital city CBDs during 2020 shows movement levels remain well below those seen earlier in the year in all six state capitals.

 

Michele Levine, CEO of Roy Morgan said: “The key reasons movement levels remain significantly lower are the millions of city office workers that are still working from home around the country and the closure of domestic and international borders. 

 

“The closed borders prevent interstate or overseas tourists from visiting the capital cities and also mean many international students that tend to congregate near the CBDs have been blocked from re-entering Australia over the past few months,” she said.

 

Movement in the Melbourne CBD during mid-November (prior to the end of the lockdown) was at an average of only 27 per cent of the pre-COVID-19 levels earlier in the year during January and February – although this has almost doubled since being at only 14 per cent during the final week of lockdown in late October.

 

Comparing movement levels during 2020 shows that movement levels in the Melbourne CBD have been lower than all other capital city CBDs every week since late March when the first national lockdown began and hit a low of only 11 per cent of normal in the final week of August.

 

Movement levels in the Sydney CBD have tended to track lower than smaller cities since the ‘second wave’ began in early July and have not been above 50 per cent of normal since hitting 51 per cent in mid-August. 

 

The Adelaide CBD and Perth CBD have been the standouts for most of 2020 with movement levels consistently between 70-80 per cent of the pre-COVID-19 levels including a high of 86 per cent of normal in the Adelaide CBD in early August.

 

However, Adelaide’s good run came to an abrupt end last week with the three-day shutdown causing the city’s weekly movement average to tumble to only 38 per cent of normal in the week to 23 November and drop from first place (at 75 per cent) before the shut-down to now be above only Melbourne.

 

Source: Roy Morgan's collaboration with UberMedia provides anonymous aggregated insights using mobile location data. Movement data for the capital city CBDs excludes the residents of the respective CBDs.