Rochester Area Skill Needs Assessment and Business Climate Survey, May 2014

Rochester Area Skill Needs Assessment and Business Climate Survey 64

Rochester Business Index A Rochester Business Index was created using the data from the Rochester Area Skill Needs Assessment and Business Climate Survey . The firms are asked to give their assessments of the current business and employment situation and their expectations for the future. Their responses are characterized as either “positive”, “neutral” or “negative.” The number of respondents who were positive was multiplied by one hundred and the number of negative respondents was multiplied by negative one hundred. The number of respondents who were neutral was multiplied by zero. These products were summed and then divided by the total number of respondents. So if all the respondents were either positive or neutral the Rochester Business Index would be 100. A -100 would indicate all respondents were either negative or neutral. Indices are calculated for the current business sentiment, current employment outlook, future business sentiment and future employment outlook. These four indices are averaged to get the Rochester Business Index. The current business sentiment and employment outlook indices are averaged to get the current business index value. The future business index is computed in a similar fashion by averaging the future business sentiment and future employment indices. The following table summarizes all the index values from the two surveys:

Rochester Business Index

Current Business Sentiment

Future Business Sentiment

Current Business

Current Employment

Future Business

Future Employment

December 2013

Total

8

6

-1

12

9

-5

23

Size Breakout

50 and under

9 3 7

8 0 8

10

7 4

9 6 6 4

-3

21 28 33 11

51 to 100 101 to 500

-4

-16 -20

-27 -57

43 11

> 500

-10

-23

-4

Monroe Community College Center for Governmental Research Rochester Business Journal