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A new survey by Bank of America says that 47 percent of chief financial officers polled expect their companies to hire more workers in 2011, up from 28 percent in the same survey last year. On the reverse side of the jobs coin, only 6 percent foresee more layoffs in the new year, versus 9 percent last year.
The reason for their optimism? Growth. Sixty-four percent of CFOs expect revenues to expand in 2011, up from 61 percent in the survey taken for 2010.
The survey of 801 financial executives was conducted for Bank of America by Granite Research consulting between mid-September and late October. You can watch Bank of America's Laura Whitley discuss the findings on CNBC here:
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"Despite the challenging economic climate, many CFOs have growing confidence that their companies have weathered the worst of the storm and are poised for expansion," said Laura Whitley, Global Commercial Products executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. "Although concerns about the economy remain, the increase in CFOs who expect to hire employees could be crucial to improving the nation's unemployment rate."
Last week, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in November, and the economy only added a measly 39,000 jobs.
So if the survey's result come to fruition, it'll be good news for the more than 15 million jobless Americans looking for a job.
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I'll believe it when I see it. They're just happy that their making bigger profits because they were able to lay off people and cut benefits and force their employees to do more work.
There is a Lot of PENT Up Demand. The Climate isn't Perfect, Yet. But CFO's are Figuring That The Economy is Improving NOW, and will IMPROVE MORE in 2011, so Very Soon, they will Add Workers and Shifts, Add New Buildings, Open New Plants, Start New Projects. Some of Which were Approved before 2007, and have Been on Hold for 3 Years.
We are ABOUT to Pick Up Where we Left Off in 2006 with SOME Industries. At The Same Time, Certain Industries Face a NEW and Much More Challenging Environment Since the Meltdown of 2008. And NEW Industries are Going to Emerge in This Expansion, that Will Take a More Prominent Role in the Future.
The Only Thing that's Certain is This: We are Moving into a NEW Era in America. The Gains of the 80's and 90's have Largely Been Erased. We Will Be Building a NEW Economy, and in 10 or 20 Years, the American Economy will Be VERY Different from how it WAS from 1945-2000.
Not Just Technologically Speaking, But in Many New Ways. It will Literally Be a New Economic World!
China and India Will Be FULL Partners In the World, with US and Europe, Japan and The Saudis', and the Brazilians and Russians and Indonesians ans Koreans.
We Can Hope at BEST: To Be 1st Among Equals. But we Will NEVER Dictate Terms to the Rest of Our Friends Again. That DAWG won't Hunt N'More. We SQUANDERED that Situation with the Iraq War and Endless deficit Spending.
The MAIN Thing is, we Can't Let The Rest of The World get Skittish about OUR Ability, Going Forward, to Deal with the Debt Load we Currently HAVE, and Bring That Debt DOWN, in the Future.
IF They Get Nervous about "The Full Faith and Credit of the USA", We have the Biggest Problem on our Hands we Have Seen since the 1860's!
That's Why We MUST Bring the Yearly Deficits Back Down Below $500 Billion SOON, and why We MUST Grow at a 4-6% Rate the Next 3 Years.
The TWO, in Combination, will Enable Us to Be in A Much Better Position with our Creditors by 2020, than the One we have BEEN in for Several Years.
If The MARKETS Can Just SEE Real Evidence from Congress that The Deficits WILL be Falling SOON, they will Begin to Expand in America, Again.
Man... either you are in some very tall ivory tower, or taking some very hallucinogenic drugs. We are on the verge of pitch forks and torches in Washington and on Wall Street
"Deficits falling soon"....... on what do you base that fairytale statement upon? I doubt that you have any knowledge of the national debt or the budget deficit.
Nice optimistic view you have, I hope you are correct. I personally don't see real recovery for 3 or 4 more years. I hope you are right, we can certainly use some good news.
"47 percent of chief financial officers polled expect their companies to hire more workers in 2011 ... The reason for their optimism? Growth. Sixty-four percent of CFOs expect revenues to expand in 2011"
How do they get away with publishing this garbage? Obviously growth is not the reason for the "optimism" when 64% expect revenue growth yet only 47% expect to hire more.
The headline should have been "Less than half of CFO's expect to hire more than they did in 2010 ... a year when they hired practically nobody".
Just report the news instead of twisting it and making inferences about cause and effect.
Anybody who was adversely affected by this recession whether because of job loss, devaluation of home value or foreclosure, substantial reduction in the value of their investment portfolio is probably unlikely to return to conspicuous consumption which is what it will take for this economy to get to a 4% growth. We won't be adding jobs at a rate necessary to get back on the road to 6 % unemployment until we are able to achieve a 4% growth,
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CFOs optimism is in sharp contrast to what their CEOs were doing last year as shown in this article:
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2010/09/ceos-more-you-cut-more-you-get-paid.html
This is a turning point in American history where this nation is no longer the strong, dominant world power it once was. There is no longer any great source of wealth flowing into the nation to sustain its economy at the level where it has historically been. On the other hand, for the last 20 years the nation has been hemhorhaging money to the Middle East in the form of oil and China in the form of manufacturing jobs and imports of pretty much all of our basic necessities. Hence, this latest blow is something the US economy may never fully recover from because it does no longer has the resources to do so. The economy is like a fairly strong elderly man who falls and breaks his hip - it may recover, but it also may never be the same again.