Mass. business confidence keeps climbing

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By Rick Saia

Confidence among Massachusetts businesses rose for the sixth straight month in February, reaching its highest point since December 2000, a prominent business group said Tuesday.

Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM) said its Business Confidence index added 1.7 points in February to 59.8, for a total gain of 9.8 since the same month in 2014 and the highest reading since a 59.9 in October 2006.

Any reading above 50 indicates more optimism than pessimism about business conditions.

And the index could climb even higher, AIM said in a statement. The organization’s Future Index, which measures prospects for the next six months, is above 60, its highest level since March 2005.

“Massachusetts employers believe that business conditions are generally good, and will continue to improve,” Fred Breimyer, a regional economist at the FDIC and a member of AIM’s Board of Economic Advisers, said in a statement. “Their optimism, though certainly restrained by the experience of severe recession, is now firmly established, and amply supported by trends in the economy.”

Three sub-indices on overall business conditions, sales and employment all showed improvement, AIM said.

Bay State employers who report adding staff outnumber those who cut staff by about two to one, but that could widen to more than four to one in the months ahead, according to Michael A. Tyler, chief investment officer for Eastern Bank Wealth Management, also a board member. “A determination to bring on additional personnel is in itself a strong indication of employer confidence,” he said.

Geographically, confidence levels in February were slightly higher within Greater Boston than the rest of the state, AIM said, while employers in the manufacturing sector were less positive than other employers.

“Manufacturers continue to face headwinds in export markets, and varying concentrations of manufacturing also explain the regional disparity,” Tyler noted. “But there is now very little variation in confidence levels by size of employer.”