A big question right now: what is the impact of the UK's current lockdown on economic activity? The answer is crucial for how much support will be needed for firms/workers at the Budget. One of the first bits of 'hard data' - UK retail sales - is out this morning (THREAD).

The good news is that retail sales have fallen much less than during the original lockdown - down by 8% in January from December, compared to a fall of 22% between February and April last year. And the level of sales in Jan was more than a fifth higher than at the April trough.

But obviously there are some big underlying changes for different types of retailers. Clothing stores' sales fell by more than a third while food stores experienced small growth in sales.

Big differences across different types of firms has been a major theme of this crisis. Our recent @resfoundation research showed that there were growing pockets of strain in certain sectors. See more here: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/on-firm-ground/

As the crisis has continued, firms have got better at carrying out activity despite ongoing restrictions. This shows up in another big rise in the share of retail sales online - now up to a record 35% of total sales.

This adaption by business to conduct more activity during lockdown was an important theme of the really excellent (I didn't write it so can say this!) RF report on the state of the labour market out this week. Well worth a read: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/long-covid-in-the-labour-market/