Even with the ongoing need that a lot of businesses have to fill job vacancies, a recent survey of business leaders throughout the region shows they are not particularly optimistic about economic conditions in the near future.
The survey was taken by the New York Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and it covers New York state and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.
Richard Deitz is an economic research advisor for the New York Fed. He said that a lot of businesses are still trying to hire people.
“There seems to be a lot of job opening,” said Deitz. “We haven’t had a whole lot of growth and the number of jobs in upstate New York, we tend to grow very slowly. But what’s happened, (and) this has even started before the pandemic, is that people are hard to find, so one of the things constraining growth in the area, is that firms sometimes have trouble finding the workers they need.”
And Deitz said company officials also also saying they don’t expect business activity to improve much in the next several months.
“Firms are not very optimistic right now. Certainly a lot of the issues with supply availability, inflation, getting the right workers are part of it. But really, over the past couple of months, firms have become a lot less optimistic about the six-month outlook. So I think there’s a lot of concern about what the next six months are going to bring,” said Deitz.
The recent survey also looked at the prevalence of remote work, which saw a big spike during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Deitz said the recent survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that remote work still remains a popular option for some companies and their employees.
“We’re at about 20% of all work in the service sector is being conducted remotely, and about 7% of all manufacturing work. These are dramatic increases and firms expect us to stay at around this level.,” Deitz noted. “There’s a slight decline, but we’re actually now seeing the new normal.”
Deitz also said that a lot of employees also want the ability to work remotely if it’s something their employer can provide.
