US SME Business Climate: Small Business Optimism Rose to Second Highest Rating in its History

Posted by Joachim Bartels | Jun 16, 2018 | Country Risk Information, Small Business Solutions, SME Business Issues, United States | 0 |

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) reported that May business optimism rose to 107.8, the second highest rating in the history of the NFIB survey (more than 45 years).

Expectations that 1) the economy would continue to improve long term, 2) higher expectations for real sales growth in the near term, and 3) optimism that now is a good time to expand helped fuel the optimism index. The NFIB said that survey respondents warned that they were seeing much higher wage and salary costs to attract and retain talent.

As a result, most companies in the survey announced that they would seek to increase their go-to-market prices (for services or products). Here’s an interesting datapoint. Nearly 60% of the firms in the survey were trying to hire workers. Of those companies that were trying to hire, 83% of them said that they couldn’t find qualified talent. Source: Armada Corporate Intelligence

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Joachim Bartels

Joachim C Bartels is a co-founder, director, head of information resources and Editor-in-Chief of BIIA. In his capacity as Editor-in-Chief he is responsible for the selection of relevant information content concerning industry insights, trends, technological developments, standards and policies impacting BIIA members in particular and the business information industry in general.

The BIIA library is approaching 10,000 news items and best demonstrated practices. BIIA members receive regular news alerts on key developments in the industry and the regulatory environment. The BIIA readership is widespread: between 4 to 5 thousand unique visitors access BIIA.com per month.