My economist friends tell me that confidence is one of the most significant factors in the health of the economy. When consumer confidence is up, people buy things freely and that flow of money is good for the economy. When consumer confidence dips, people stop buying things and that lack of money is bad for the economy. As funny as it sounds, the way to get out of a recession or depression is to spend your way out of it… which can be done by boosting consumer confidence. Economists try to find different ways to identify confidence so that they can predict the direction of the market.
Just recently I stumbled over a different kind of confidence measurement. It's one I am still learning about:
Reported at Louisville’s Business First, it measures outlook and hiring plans for the near future. They study just 7 states to get the pulse of the market then they divide their findings by state, industry, and major cities.
The confidence indicator shows that small business confidence dipped in February but rebounded in March and is currently just 0.1% shy of an all-time high. It's a great time to be a small business owner.
See the most current version of their index (which they produce monthly).
