October 2021 was apparently a good month for business. Perhaps the holiday atmosphere and decline in the number of COVID cases just before the outbreak of Omicron or perhaps other factors prompted Israelis to spend 35% more than in October 2019. In most areas, the figures for November were not as good.
Credit card purchases not only shed light on the extent of people’s expenditures, but illuminate even more so the areas in which people spend more and those in which they conserve. As expenditures are subject to significant seasonal shifts, we have chosen to compare each month to the corresponding one in a previous year. The year we chose was 2019 – the year before the pandemic.
The impact of COVID-19 became evident beginning in March 2020, and especially so by April, during which the greatest drops in expenditures (relative to the corresponding month in 2019, as noted) were in flights and tourism (nearly down by 100%), followed by leisure and recreation (down by 81%), and clothing and footwear (down by 79%). The only area that was not harmed was computers and software, which saw an increase of 31% in March and 19% in April 2020 relative to their corresponding months in 2019.
Throughout the COVID pandemic, expenditures on computers and software remained high, reaching a peak from February to March 2021 of more than a 60% gain relative to the corresponding months in 2019.
Expenditures on leisure and recreation began to increase toward the end of 2020, reaching their 2019 levels in March 2021. Israelis’ expenditures on tourist flights and accommodation also began to increase towards the end of 2020, reaching their 2019 levels in November 2021. During that month, for the first time since January 2020 according to periodic Central Bureau of Statistics data, the scope of purchases exceeded those of the corresponding month in 2019.
Translated by Merav Datan.