Contact: Rod Hise at 608-770-7850 or Tom Still at 608-695-7557
MADISON – While the majority of technology industry executives who responded to the most recent WisBusiness.com Tech Leaders Survey still rate Wisconsin’s economy as poor (19.9 percent) or only fair (65.2 percent), perceptions about the state’s economy amongst those executives shifted positively from the second quarter to the third quarter.
An average of 16 percent of advanced manufacturing, biotechnology and medical device, and information technology executives now rate the state’s economy as good, an increase of about 5 percentage points in each of those three industries from the second quarter. Fifty-five percent (55.4 percent) of survey respondents now believe Wisconsin’s economy will get better during the next year, an increase of 10.5 percentage points from the second quarter.
The number of executives who believe economic conditions in Wisconsin will get worse during the same period declined about 8 percentage points to 10.9 percent. Thirty-four percent (33.7 percent) of the executives who responded to the survey believe the state’s economy will stay the same during the next 12 months, roughly the same percentage as the second quarter.
The quarterly WisBusiness.com Tech Leaders Survey gauges the perceptions of senior executives in four Wisconsin technology industries: information technology, biotechnology and medical devices, advanced manufacturing, and clean technology and agricultural biotechnology. It measures the executives’ ratings on five key business indicators, including the condition of the state’s economy, their industry, their company, the capital markets and the labor market.
The survey is a project of the Wisconsin Technology Council, in partnership with WisBusiness.com, a Madison-based online business news service, and the Luminis Group, Ltd., a Madison-based corporate and marketing communications firm. The survey was conducted Sept. 21-30, and collected responses from 260 technology company executives from across Wisconsin.
The executives’ rating of the overall prospects for the company they run was largely unchanged from the second quarter. Seventy-two percent of the executives who responded to the survey rate the overall prospects for their own companies as good (54.7 percent) or excellent (17.0 percent). A quarter (25.6 percent) rate those prospects as only fair and three percent (2.7 percent) rate them as poor. There was an increase from the second quarter to the third quarter in advanced manufacturing executives (+16.6 points) and a decrease in clean technology and agricultural biotechnology executives (-11.2 points) rating the prospects for their companies as good. Virtually all (97.7 percent) of the executives who responded to this quarter’s survey believe things will get better or stay the same during the next year for the company they run.
“While Wisconsin’s tech executives continue to view the state’s economy poorly, their responses in the third-quarter WisBusiness.com Tech Leaders Survey indicate we are beginning to climb our way out of the hole,” said Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council. “There was significant and positive movement from last quarter’s survey in the percentage of executives rating of the economy as good. As important, a majority of tech executives now believe the state’s economy will get better during the next 12 months.
Industry Condition
Executives in Wisconsin’s advanced manufacturing sector who responded to the third-quarter survey continue to rate the condition of their industry as worse than executives in the other three sectors do. Nearly 70 percent (68.8 percent) of advanced manufacturing executives rated the condition of that industry as only fair, an increase of 6.5 percentage points from the second-quarter survey. Industry-wide perceptions, however, seem to be trumped by the executives’ ratings of their companies’ prospects. There was a 16.6 point, quarter-to-quarter increase in advanced manufacturing executives rating the prospects of their companies as good.
Nearly 65 percent (64.7 percent) of clean tech and agbio executives who responded to the survey rated the condition of their industry as only fair, an increase of 16.5 percentage points from the second quarter. Biotech and info tech company executives continue to feel better about the condition of their industry than do executives in the other two sectors. Roughly a third of executives in both of those sectors rated the current condition of their industries as good.
There was little change from the second quarter to the third quarter and little disagreement amongst sectors about their future. Fifty percent (50.1 percent) of those who responded to the survey said the condition of their industry will get better during the next 12 months. Forty-three percent (42.6 percent) said it would stay the same; 6 percent (6.4 percent) believe the condition of their sector will get worse during the next year.
Availability of Capital
More than three-quarters (78.7 percent) of those tech sector leaders who responded to the survey continue to rate the availability of capital to companies like theirs as only fair (36.4 percent) or poor (42.3 percent), virtually unchanged from the second-quarter survey. However, the percentage of biotech and medical device executives who rated the availability of capital as good increased 9 percentage points from the second to the third quarter. The percentages of info tech, and clean tech and agbio executives who rated the availability of capital as good declined an average of 5.6 percentage points from last quarter.
Nearly a third of survey respondents believe that the availability of capital will get better during the next year, largely unchanged from the second quarter. Sixty percent (59.9 percent) believe the availability of capital will stay the same during the next 12 months. There was an 18 percentage point (17.8 percent) increase from the second quarter in the number of clean tech and agbio executives who believe the availability of capital will get better during the next year.
Current Labor Market
There was little change in perceptions of ability of the current labor market to meet the personnel needs of their own companies. Eighty percent of those who responded to the third-quarter survey rated as good (57.5 percent) or excellent (22.6 percent) the ability of the current labor market to meet their needs. Biotechnology and medical device executives continue to view the current labor market most favorably, with 64 percent (64.4 percent) of biotech executives who responded to the survey rating the ability of the current labor market to fill the personnel needs of their own companies as good, an increase of more than 16 percentage points from the second quarter. Information technology executives still view the current labor market least favorably, as a third (33.4 percent) of respondents from that industry rating it as only fair (28.0 percent) or poor (5.4 percent), an increase of about 5 percentage points from the second quarter.
The number of survey respondents who believe the ability of the current labor market to fill their company’s personnel needs will get better during the next 12 months declined more than five percent from the second quarter to 16.0 percent, perhaps a sign that the executives see the labor market tightening as the economy improves. The vast majority (79.0 percent) said it would stay the same; 5 percent (5.0 percent) believe the labor market will get worse in the next year
About the WisBusiness.com Tech Leaders Survey
The WisBusiness.com Tech Leaders Survey is a quarterly, statewide survey of senior executives in the information technology, biotechnology and medical device, advanced manufacturing, and clean technology and agricultural biotechnology industries. The survey is a project of the Wisconsin Technology Council, WisBusiness.com and the Luminis Group, Ltd. The survey questionnaire is administered by e-mail and Web-based survey technology. This quarter’s survey was fielded from Sept. 21-30, 2009 (n=260, 27.9 percent response rate). Respondents represent a geographic, developmental and disciplinary cross-section of the state’s technology industry. The survey is conducted by the Luminis Group, Ltd., Madison, Wis., using generally accepted methodology, including non-biased question wording and order, response category randomization, where appropriate, and uncompensated respondent participation.
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