Survey: Bay Area Business Leaders Expect Continued Economic Recovery

SAN JOSE, CA-A large majority (69%) of the region’s business leaders forecast continued improvement in the Bay Area economy over the next six months, according to the Bay Area Council’s quarterly Business Confidence Survey. Last year at this time, only 38% of respondents anticipated any improvement in the local economy. Of the 511 CEOs and senior business executives confidentially surveyed in April, 58% said Bay Area economic conditions are better now than six months ago, while only 9% report conditions worse than they were six months ago in the Bay Area. T”The Bay Area has lost more than 400,000 jobs in the past three years, while California actually added more than 125,000 jobs, clearly making this region the epicenter of the recent recession,” says Jim Wunderman, president and CEO of the Bay Area Council. “An economic recovery in the Bay Area means a much better fiscal picture in Sacramento.”While 69% of those surveyed forecast economic improvement over the next six months, most of the rest, 25%, expect current conditions to remain the same for the next six months. “The elevated business confidence level has yet to translate into robust job growth in the Bay Area,” says Lenny Mendonca, a director at McKinsey & Company, the international management-consulting firm that helped develop the survey. The Bay Area Council developed the Bay Area Business Confidence Survey to measure employer expectations of the Bay Area economy. The spring survey is the eleventh in a series of quarterly measures of business confidence. The next Business Confidence Survey will be conducted and reported this summer.