B.C. small businesses are the most optimistic in Canada: poll

Small business confidence | BCBusiness
The CFIB’s business barometer index.

Twenty-four per cent of respondents plan on adding full-time staff in the next three months

Small business owners in B.C remain the country’s most optimistic, according to a scorecard on business confidence issued by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.
 
Businesses in B.C. and Newfoundland registered the highest levels of optimism, at 72 on a 100-point scale. Forty-one per cent of owners said that the state of their business was ‘good’, while nine per cent said it was ‘bad’. Nearly a quarter of the 357 respondents plan to add full-time staff within three months, down slightly from earlier this year. The CFIB attributes the dip to the end of the summer hiring season.
 
The biggest self-reported headaches for B.C. small businesses? Thirty-six per cent of respondents cited a shortage of skilled labour, and 34 per cent cited insufficient demands as the most pressing limitations on sales and production growth.
 
The index, which polls small businesses on their hiring intentions, cost constraints and the general state of business health, has been issued quarterly since 2008. At the depths of the last recession, the B.C. sample self-reported an index score of 35. The CFIB, which lobbies on behalf of small businesses, views an index level of between 65 and 70 as an economy “growing at its potential.”