U.S. companies expect to make more money, and spend more of it, in the year ahead—and that could translate into more jobs. At the same time, finance executives’ outlook of the overall economy has cooled.
Those are the key takeaways from the third-quarter Business & Industry Economic Outlook Survey, released Tuesday by the AICPA.
The quarterly survey takes the temperature of more than 1,200 finance professionals across industries, gauging their outlook in nine key areas: U.S. economic optimism, organization optimism, expansion plans, revenue, profits, employment, IT spending, training and development, and other capital spending.
Those nine indicators make up the CPA Outlook Index (CPAOI), which matched a post-recession high of 69 in the most recent survey. That’s even with last quarter, when optimism about the U.S. economic outlook and the fortunes of respondents’ own companies surged. A score above 50 indicates a positive outlook.
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Source: Neil Amato, http://www.journalofaccountancy.com
