...chief executives are so pessimistic that over 66 percent expect that the size of their workforce will either stay the same or decrease over the next year according to Chief Executive magazine’s CEO Confidence Index for August 2011.
OK. That's not hard to believe.
The reasons for their reluctance are just as interesting.
The ranking of hiring-inducing priorities that were ranked “important to extremely important” were as follows:Quoted by Jacobson/Legal Insurrection
- Backlog of work or increased revenue — 88.2 percent
- Evidence of economic expansion — 77.2 percent
- Repeal of Health Care Reform or eliminate uncertainty over its provisions — 71.6 percent
- Reduction in government regulation of business — 62 percent
- Government holds line on debt ceiling — 56.3
- Reduced corporate tax rate to OECD average — 54.3
- Balanced federal budget — 53.9
- Gov’t passes all free trade agreements without delay — 48.8
- Repeal Dodd-Frank or eliminate uncertainty over its provisions — 48.2
The most significant issue (outside of pure-business stuff: orders and expansion signals) is ObamaCare.
This tells us what we always knew: immediate business considerations are first and second. Non-immediates such as ObamaCare, regulation, blahblahblah are relegated to "nice to have" but not "need to have."
Another interesting question would have been this one: "If you choose to expand your workforce, will you use temporary labor or direct-hires?"
That would be very revealing, indeed.
3 comments:
Lack of sales hasn't left the top of that list for 3 years.
No mention of returning the trillions in tax breaks until the climate improves. Suckerzzzz!
I'm sure the good anony realizes that multi-nationals pay taxes on earnings in the countries in which they do business right?
And taxing those same earnings from that other country again at a higher rate in the US is sure to bring back all sorts of capital for growth here right?
I have been in Global Sourcing and Supply Chain for almost 24 years now - working for a formerly large presence in the MKE area, and couple of smaller entities in the suburbs and now an evil multinational. US businesses CAN compete in the global market. But the ever-growing leviathan of regulations and other mandates by the various levels of government are doing their damndest to make sure that they can't.
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