(Please see this May 5 update on trends in Minnesota after the gradual opening of retail)

Unacast has offered a dashboard showing retail trends across the country using estimates of foot traffic in various retail sectors. The dashboard then ranks the country, state and sectors from hot (sales growing more than 20 percent) to cold (sales declines more than 20 percent).

The overall trend for the US and states as expected was “cold” – however there is some variations when you look at performance by sectors. For instance, the home goods and improvement sector was hot in Minnesota and some other states. Overall in Minnesota only two other sectors showed positive trends, Grocery and Food Retail and Auto Dealership and Car Rentals among major sectors. In state bordering Minnesota South Dakota had the most favorable outlook followed by Iowa, in terms of the number of sectors with positive growth in sales.

New York was a frozen tundra – and to a lesser extent the other large states Florida and Texas.

The dashboard is quite dynamic – for instance on a state if you click on a sector is shows the national trend for that sector which you will see national trends. While rated “Cool” for the nation as a whole, it is a “Hot” market in many states.

As economies open up this dashboard will help us see how the retail sector is performing and the nature of the economic recovery. The dashboard will also indicates the nature of the recovery namely which sectors are growing or declining as this pattern varies by state.