Spending monitor: Spending decline seems to have stabilised in the last week

Danish spending data up to and including 26 March shows that the massive shifts in consumption that have taken place since early March, notably since the announcement of extensive lockdown measures on 11 March, have continued.

Service spending remains very depressed, although restaurant spending has come up a bit, likely due to an increase in take-away supply. Otherwise, all things travel-related continue to show few signs of improvement, and likely won't until the economy is opened up again.

Spending on shoes and clothing has come up a bit, likely due to online sales, although we still do not have separate figures for this. Some spending types, such as hardware stores, continue to rise, as Danes undertake home-improvement projects while under lockdown.

Spending in grocery stores shot up and almost doubled on Thursday 12 March and Tuesday 17 March. In recent days grocery store spending has risen somewhat, and is now at around 40% above normal.

Grocery store spending continues to support overall spending (as defined here, not in the national accounts), which seems to have stabilised somewhat at around 20% below normal levels. Excluding grocery store spending we are looking at a 40% decline compared to March last year.

On the following two pages we detail the developments in spending by type.