Online shopping declines as workers return to the office

Yahoo Finance Live’s Jared Blikre breaks down the chart of the day.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: We have two charts of the day for you, and both of these come to us from Jefferies' Aneta Markowska. Now, in the first chart, you can see the return to offices for corporate workers. It continues to climb. Chart looks at office occupancy rates in major metro cities. Interestingly, as return to offices have been happening, it looks like people are spending less time shopping online. So that comes to our second chart here.

Chart two shows a clear downtrend in online shopping of late. This goes a long way to reinforcing the cautious commentary recently from retailers like Restoration Hardware, otherwise known as RH, and Bed, Bath & Beyond. Brian, just taking a look at the first chart again, I was noticing that we are very, very far off from those original levels pre-pandemic. I mean, it looks like we're in the bottom fifth, the bottom quarter of that chart. You can see barely getting up to, what, 30%, 35%. Things have permanently changed, I think. I don't think we're ever going to get back up to that 100 mark, and maybe for the best, Brian.

BRIAN SOZZI: It'll be a slow slog, but of course, pre-pandemic, we were office warriors. Sick, you name it, broken foot, broken leg-- we're going to the office. Tornado-- we're still going into the office. Of course, those things have changed, in large part, because of the pandemic. Technology has helped us out there as well.

But that retail sales chart is very, very fascinating on people, what they're shopping online. We saw that today in the retail sales report here, Jared. You did see sales at non-store retailers-- that is online-- those sales were down month over month.

And it could be just as people are going back to the office, whoever is going back to the office, perhaps they're just less on their phones. They're a bit less on their desktop computers buying stuff. Now, how that shows up in earnings results for retailers in coming couple of weeks, unclear. Now Bed, Bath & Beyond yesterday, a true disaster of a quarter. They did note online sales were down 18$. So for them, it showed up.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, it did. And just thinking about the return to office here, as we get prepared to do it ourselves-- and I'm quite excited for this-- I don't want to give away too many details here-- I have been spending a little bit less time online as well. I mean, I had to do a bunch of shopping in the early days of the pandemic. I think it pulled forward a lot of demand for me personally, but I'm set up now. I got some new clothes. I got some new doodads for my home office here. I think I'm good to go, so.

BRIAN SOZZI: I'm so excited to see you, Jared. I am pumped. I can't wait.

JARED BLIKRE: I'll tell you what, I'm going to be standing at the Interactive. You're going to be five feet away from me. We're going to be able to converse in real-time here in a real way. No more remotes. I mean, this is what we've been waiting for.

BRIAN SOZZI: My hair is standing up on my arms, Jared, and I don't have any hair on my arms. I just can't. I can't take it. I'm so excited.

JARED BLIKRE: Full disclosure-- neither do I.