NEW YORK—The national average for gross revenue at ECP locations fell last week, Aug. 30-Sept. 5, at a rate of -4 index points, likely impacted in part by the holiday weekend, although the actual Monday Labor Day holiday occurred one day after the period within which the numbers were tallied for last week (Week 36), according to Jobson’s most recent Practice Performance Tracker. In 2019, the actual Monday Labor Day holiday did fall within Week 36 of 2019 but not in 2020.
 
All optical sales categories decreased last week (Aug. 30-Sept. 5) when compared with the previous week (Aug. 23-Aug. 29), likely due, in part, to the holiday weekend. Although the actual Monday Labor Day holiday was not included in last week's numbers, the fact that it was a holiday weekend in part influenced the across-the-board decreases in optical sales.
 
Even with the overall decrease in optical sales last week, all categories are still within 10 index points of an average week in 2019 (the index baseline assigned a value of 100 for this Optical Business Tracker). Gross revenue remains above this baseline level by 2 index points, while the other categories range from 4 index points below ( for lens pairs) to 10 index points below (for contact lenses).
 
Jobson Optical Research selected 1,500 optical locations that have been operating and reporting their sales to its partners, GPN and ABB Analytics, since 2019. The index has been rebased to an average week in 2019. Going forward, this new index base will be used as an arbitrary benchmark and assigned a value of 100.

Click here to view the complete Jobson COVID-19 Performance Tracker