Business Barometer® - Small business confidence dips in April
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May 2012
Ted Mallett, Vice-President & Chief Economist
Canada’s small and mid-sized businesses were a little less optimistic in April compared with the month before. The 1.3-point drop in CFIB’s Business Barometer® Index to 66.4 gave back most of the big gains we had seen in the March survey findings. Still, it is the second-best reading for the year and the first decline registered in the Index since August 2011, when international financial markets seriously rattled confidence. For the most part, overall survey findings still point to stable business conditions and a modestly growing economy. The profile of business owners’ outlooks by sector and by region also showed very little relative change in April, which can be taken as another sign of general stability.
Measured on a scale between 0 and 100, an index level above 50 means owners expecting their business’ performance to be stronger in the next year outnumber those expecting weaker performance. One normally sees an index level of between 65 and 70 when the economy is growing at its potential.
