Connecticut and southern Massachusetts business leaders are more hopeful about this year’s economy but many say they aren’t holding their breaths, a fresh survey shows.
The slightly optimistic outlook for the 2013 economy comes as many business leaders also reported dissatisfaction with the economic conditions they faced over the last several months of 2012, according to First Niagara Bank’s second annual survey of executives in all six Connecticut counties and the southern Massachusetts counties of Hampden and Worcester.
“The survey shows that business leaders are looking at 2013 being a better year for their companies and for business conditions in the Connecticut and Massachusetts economies but with the knowledge they are operating in the reality of the ‘new normal’,” said David Ring, managing director of enterprise banking at First Niagara.
New York’s Siena College Research Institute surveyed chief executive officers, chief financial officers and senior managers of private companies with $5 million to $200 million in annual sales in the service, manufacturing, retail, engineering/construction, wholesale and distribution, financial and food and beverage industries.
This year’s survey reports that 35 percent of these business leaders say they expect economic conditions to get better in their respective states in 2013, down from 41 percent who said that last year. Another 31 percent, up from 24 percent last year, expect these conditions to worsen while 34% of business leaders expect conditions to stay the same for 2013.
Results from the second annual First Niagara Survey of Southwestern New England Business Leaders are available at http://www.siena.edu/sri/southwesternbusinessleaders2013
