Real-time data: The state of hourly work at Phoenix small businesses

The spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) is having a devastating impact on small businesses and hourly workers. At Homebase, we are in a unique position to see this happen in real-time. In the interest of transparency, we’re sharing our data publicly here, so that governments and communities can understand and support the people who are most impacted.

In addition to daily updates to the datasets below, we’re surveying workers to understand their experiences and actively refreshing lists of financial resources for small businesses and employees to help people affected by COVID-19 quickly get relief.

If you have questions about the data, please reach out to us at data@joinhomebase.com.

If you are a journalist, academic, or policymaker interested in partnering, please email us.

The impacts of COVID-19 on Phoenix have been far-reaching. The Homebase data gives us insight into these impacts through three key measures:

1) The volume of hours worked by employees
2) the number businesses open at all
3) The number of employees working

Compared to January benchmarks, all three measures have shown dramatic declines before stabilizing at a “new normal”.

Note: While the Homebase data has robust coverage across Phoenix, some of the specific industry cuts may result in smaller segments and, hence, some volatility in the key measures.

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Want to dig deeper? Check out our city comparison tool.

This dataset is based on Homebase data for over 60,000 businesses and 1 million hourly employees active in the US in January 2020. All the rates compare that day vs. the median for that day of the week for the period Jan 4, 2020 – Jan 31, 2020.

“Hours worked” is calculated from the hours recorded in Homebase timecards.
“Locations open” is based on whether or not a business had at least one employee clock-in.
“Employees working” is based on the distinct number of hourly workers with at least one clock-in.

Note that the cyclical dips represent the weekends—one interesting insight from the data is that businesses are more likely to be closed on the weekends, relative to weekdays, in comparison to the January benchmark.

Not all industries have been impacted in the same manner. Use this page to explore the impact of COVID-19 across different industries in Phoenix. As lockdown restrictions are eased, the dynamics across industry will continue to change.

Note: The Homebase data set is more heavily weighted towards Food & Drink and Retail businesses. As a result, some of the smaller segments (e.g. Transportation) may experience more volatility due to smaller samples.

Food & Drink

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Retail

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Home and Repair

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Beauty & Personal Care

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Health Care & Fitness

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Leisure & Entertainment

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Professional Services

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Transportation

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We are actively partnering with journalists, academics and policymakers to shine light on what’s happening to Main Street.

Email us at data@joinhomebase.com for any inquiries or if you’d like access to more granular data

Homebase makes managing hourly work easier for over 100,000 local businesses. With free employee scheduling, time tracking, team communication, and hiring, managers and employees can spend less time on paperwork and more time on growing their business.