A survey of Massachusetts companies reveals they don’t fairly know methods to really feel in regards to the total state of the financial system.
Employers have spent the yr bouncing forwards and backwards between barely pessimistic or barely optimistic financial outlooks, and October was no outlier, in response to the most recent Business Confidence Index printed by the Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
“Massachusetts employers appear to be just as ambivalent about the state of the economy as many experts,” the affiliation wrote. “The BCI has moved for most of 2023 in a narrow range as employers attempt to gauge an economy that has proved surprisingly resilient in the face of rising interest rates, predictions of recession, and war in both Ukraine and the Middle East.”
Confidence among the many surveyed companies was up 1.4 factors final month, to 51.2%, pushing sentiment again into optimistic territory after a September hunch towards a damaging outlook.
A shocking 4.9% third quarter economic-growth announcement by the Commerce Department and traditionally low state unemployment numbers helped buoy employer confidence in October. But in response to Sara Johnson, the chair of the AIM’s board of financial advisors, these numbers aren’t essentially excellent news for everybody.
“Rapid increases in consumer and government spending continue to fuel the economy, suggesting the Federal Reserve may have to keep interest rates high for longer than it originally anticipated. A persistently tight labor market is exerting upward pressure on wages, leaving price inflation uncomfortably high,” she stated.
Concerns over the labor market have continued in AIM surveys for months whereas state and nationwide unemployment numbers have remained at traditionally low ranges. Unemployment in Massachusetts stands at simply 2.6%, whereas nationally it’s at 3.9%, and with so few folks on the lookout for work, some — however not all — employers are critically struggling to fill expert positions.
“Unemployment in Massachusetts remains at record lows, but we hear anecdotally from some
companies in the BCI survey that they have been able to find more qualified workers than they did a year ago. Massachusetts must still reckon with the structural demographic, educational and other factors that will affect labor supply in the long term,” Alan Clayton-Matthews, Professor Emeritus of Economics and Public Policy at Northeastern University, stated together with the survey.
One factor the state might do to ease uncertainty, in response to the Association, is comply with by means of with Gov. Maura Healey’s plan to spice up housing inventory. Housing advocates and enterprise teams alike praised Healey’s $4.1 billion plan to “jumpstart” the manufacturing of 40,000 new properties when it was introduced final month.
“Virtually every employer in Massachusetts has at one time heard a valued employee say: ‘I love
working for this company, but my family can’t afford a house here.’ AIM looks forward to working with
the Healey-Driscoll Administration and the Legislature to ensure those conversations become a thing of
the past,” AIM President Brooke Thomson stated.
AIM surveys greater than 140 Bay State companies to provide their month-to-month index, the primary of which was printed in July of 1991. According to AIM, enterprise confidence hit historic highs in 1997 and 1998, with two months in both yr exhibiting 68.5% confidence, and hit a low in February of 2009, when it was 33.3%.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”