UPDATE: COVID-19 Recovery Dashboard

The dashboard was last updated on September 28, 2022.

The BCREA Economics team has created the COVID-19 Recovery Dashboard to help REALTORS® monitor BC’s economic recovery. This dashboard focuses on the sectors and activities that have been most significantly impacted by the pandemic and the province’s state of emergency.

To monitor the province’s progress, we benchmark each indicator to February 2020, the month before the pandemic was declared. This dashboard will be updated each month.

• Housing Markets
  During August, home sales continued to decline in BC. Starts rose while new listings dropped. Sales fell once again all over the province, with all areas of the province below pre-pandemic levels except for the North. Rental costs in Vancouver and Victoria continue rising and remain elevated relative to most other points since the onset of the pandemic.

• Retail, Restaurant Reservations and Movement
  Retail sales declined in July on lower gasoline and clothing sales. Restaurant reservations in Vancouver are back to pre-pandemic levels. In BC, Google’s measure of movement trends is currently just 4 per cent below pre-pandemic levels.

• Jobs and Hours Worked
  Although aggregate employment has recovered to pre-pandemic levels in BC, the accommodation & food service sectors remained about 13 per cent below the pre-pandemic level in August. The labour market has served high-income workers much better than low-income workers. Employment in high-income industries is about 10 per cent above pre-pandemic employment levels, while employment in low-income sectors is about 6 per cent below pre-pandemic employment levels.

• Manufacturing and International Trade
  Exports, imports, and manufacturing sales all fell in July.

• Business and Consumer Confidences
  Business confidence retreated in August, likely on continuing fears related to higher inflation expectations and rising interest rates.

• Tourism
  The number of US and non-US tourists rose again in July, with both US and non-US tourists reaching the highest level since the onset of the pandemic.

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