{"id":3531,"date":"2011-11-29T13:44:01","date_gmt":"2011-11-29T18:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=3531"},"modified":"2011-11-30T10:38:12","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T15:38:12","slug":"six-surprising-takeaways-from-the-2012-nh-business-outlook-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/11\/29\/six-surprising-takeaways-from-the-2012-nh-business-outlook-survey\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Surprising Takeaways From The 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Melanie Cook \/ Flickr<\/p>

Granite State businesses were invited to gaze into a crystal ball and predict the area's economic future in the coming year<\/p><\/div>\n

Every year, New Hampshire’s Business and Industry Association<\/a> commissions a survey of the state’s firms.\u00a0 The idea is to get the pulse of how businesses think the next year will go.\u00a0 Do they think economic conditions, hiring, revenues, and capital spending will increase, decrease, or remain the same over the next year?<\/p>\n

The answers to those questions–released today in the 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey<\/a>–weren’t really that surprising.\u00a0 Here are the basics:\u00a0 Compared to predictions for 2011, respondents were slightly less optimistic for 2012…but still “cautiously optimistic.”\u00a0 For example, 14 percent of businesses thought hiring would improve, and 79 percent thought it would stay the same.\u00a0 Meanwhile, 43 percent thought their revenue would go up, and 26 percent thought they’d need to make more capital expenditures.\u00a0 Those numbers are no more than six points below predictions in the 2011 Outlook Survey.<\/p>\n

Respondents were much less optimistic about economic conditions compared to the 2011 Outlook Survey.\u00a0 While 47 percent of businesses thought economic conditions would improve this year, only 31 percent think they’ll improve in 2012.\u00a0 Next year, 44 percent of respondents expect the economy to pretty much stay the same.\u00a0 Again, you can file that one under “not surprising,” given the ongoing Eurozone crisis, the continued economic fallout of the Japanese earthquake-tsunami-nuclear accident, the debt ceiling\/super committee kerfuffle, high national unemployment rates, etc., etc., etc.<\/p>\n

It’s when the survey-takers asked an open-ended question–“identify the biggest problems, or challenges, facing their business today”–that things got really interesting.<\/p>\n

So with that in mind…let’s get to the Six Surprising Takeaways from the BIA’s 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Large businesses are much more concerned about the cost of health care and insurance than small businesses.<\/strong>\u00a0 We wouldn’t blame you for filing this one in the “What??” column.\u00a0 After all, isn’t everyone <\/em>worried about health care costs?\u00a0 And don’t large businesses have more people to pay for?\u00a0 Well…yes.\u00a0 But if you Google “Obamacare, small business<\/a>,” you’ll find numerous conservative bloggers and other writers commenting on how, if the insurance tax credit the law gives to small businesses isn’t hurting them, it’s not helping them provide insurance, either<\/a>.\u00a0 Historically, thanks to their small coverage pools, small businesses have typically paid much higher premiums for their employees’ insurance–if they can insure them at all–than large firms. And yet, the 2012 Outlook Survey found “86 percent of large businesses consider the cost of health care and health insurance a major<\/em> or minor concern<\/em>,compared to 66 percent of small businesses.”<\/li>\n
  2. After a brief hiatus, businesses are once again concerned about the high cost of<\/strong><\/strong>\n
  3. “Lack of qualified labor” rose as a concern for the state’s large firms.<\/strong>\u00a0 New Hampshire’s unemployment rate–about 5.3 percent–is much lower than the national average, which has been hovering around 9 percent.\u00a0 Although we’ve been hearing rumblings from various companies and interest groups about this very issue, it remains surprising.\u00a0 Between the unemployed population and the well-trained labor pools centered in Boston and Cambridge, one might be tempted to think that there would be more than enough qualified workers within easy reach.\u00a0 Businesses, however, don’t appear to agree. \u00a0 It rose from the No. 9 major concern looking to tying for the No. 5 spot as we move toward 2012.<\/li>\n
  4. “High business taxes” tumbled from the No. 3 worry for 2011 to No. 7.\u00a0 <\/strong>The Granite State’s unusual double business tax structure is something that firms talk about a <\/a>lot<\/a>.\u00a0 <\/em>Originally, the Business Profits Tax (BPT) was the corporate tax.\u00a0 But back in the 1990’s, large firms complained, because they were shouldering most of the corporate tax burden.\u00a0 So small businesses were brought into the business tax fold with the Business Enterprise Tax (BET), which is a tax on workers’ wages and dividends.\u00a0 It’s been a thorn in the corporate community’s side ever since.\u00a0 And yet…in 2012, businesses think they’ll have bigger things to worry about.<\/li>\n
  5. \n
  6. Businesses are worried about “too much competition” in 2012:\u00a0 <\/strong>For the market-oriented “Live Free or Die” state, we found this one particularly intriguing.\u00a0 Can you even have “too much competition” in a free market?\u00a0 Interestingly enough, this concern about competition-in-general in 2012 edged out 2011’s No. 10 major worry–“foreign competition.”<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You can read the 2012 NH Business Outlook Survey here<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s a quick read that provides a lot of food for thought for the coming year.\u00a0 (The BIA, incidentally, commissioned the study from RKM Research & Communications<\/a> of Portsmouth.)<\/p>\n

    Ed. Note: In a previous version of this post, we inadvertently listed the state’s unemployment rate as 5.4 percent. \u00a0That was the September figure. \u00a0The most recent number, from October, was actually 5.3 percent.\u00a0 Also, we previously reported confidence index numbers as percentages.\u00a0 The current percentages listed are correct.\u00a0 We regret the errors.
    \n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Every year, New Hampshire’s Business and Industry Association commissions a survey of the state’s firms.\u00a0 The idea is to get the pulse of how businesses think the next year will go.\u00a0 Do they think economic conditions, hiring, revenues, and capital spending will increase, decrease, or remain the same over the next year? The answers to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[84,28,513,185,502,521],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3531"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3549,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3531\/revisions\/3549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}