CE Barometer results for November 2021

The November 2021 barometer survey was undertaken during the first three weeks of December.

We are seeing light at the end of the long Covid tunnel, but that may only serve to shift our attention to other industry issues, such as skills shortages and supply chain challenges, that may yet hamper recovery.

Accordingly, this month’s balance figure (the difference between those reporting positive and negative movement between September and October 2021) has tumbled from 19.0% in last month’s survey, to -1.5%. This is the first negative balance figure for confidence seen February 2020, which will certainly set some alarm bells ringing.

We will hope this is a blip, and the majority of respondents (56.7%) did report business levels in November remaining steady – but only 20.9% reported growth, a fall of 17.2% from the previous month.

The figures are somewhat healthier when compared with a year ago, with more than half of repondents (53.7%) reporting improvement. However, this is also a drop of almost 10% from the previous month.

Clearly, though, there is still confidence in future performance, with 52.2% of respondents expecting to see growth in a year’s time, an improvement of 4.6% on last month’s survey.

The number predicting worsening performance in a year’s time has fallen by 4.1%, to just 13.4%.