Chief executive officers of many of the largest companies are upbeat about their hiring plans.
According to the latest quarterly survey from The Business Roundtable, 33 percent of CEOs expect to hire more people over the next six months, compared with 25 percent of CEOs who were surveyed in December.
This also marks the first occasion since the Roundtable began its survey in the fall of 2002 that more CEOs are projecting increases, rather than decreases, in employment at their companies. Altogether, 78 percent of CEOs projected that employment at their companies will increase or remain the same in the next six months.
The survey was completed by 122 of the Roundtable’s 150 member companies.
Other findings:
- On average, respondents expect real GDP growth of 3.7 percent in 2004, a slight improvement over the 3.6 percent projection they made in December.
- 88 percent of respondents expect their companies’ sales to increase over the next six months, while 11 percent expect no change.
- 43 percent expect their company’s capital spending to change in the next six months; 50 percent anticipate no change.