🔒Economic Survey: HBJ readers more optimistic about 2025

How far will interest rates go down in 2025? What impact will a second Trump administration have on the economy? Will the labor shortage continue to ease?

Those are some of the major economic questions as we start the new year. 

Hartford Business Journal readers are more optimistic about 2025 than they were a year ago. 

In fact, 51.2% of HBJ readers say Connecticut’s economy will improve significantly or slightly this year. A year ago, 43.6% of readers predicted the economy would improve in 2024. 

Meanwhile, 22% of readers expect the state’s economy to decline in 2025, while 26.7% expect no growth. 

Those were some of the findings from Hartford Business Journal’s 2025 economic outlook survey, the results of which are featured in this special pullout section.

The survey, sponsored by NBT Bank, was emailed to more than 11,100 HBJ Today subscribers. The unscientific results were gathered over a three-week period in November and early December, garnering 255 responses. 

Of those surveyed, 80% said they work at privately-held companies and 65.3% said their business has fewer than 50 employees.

The results provide a window into how the state’s economy will perform in 2025. To provide further context about the results, each chart below shows the reader survey results from both the 2025 and 2024.