WNY CEOs feeling blue about business conditions

Western New York CEOs feel pessimistic about economic conditions in New York State, according to a recent survey.

“The findings this year are startling,” said Don Levy, director of the Siena College Research Institute. “CEOs this year have a negative view of the marketplace.”

In spite of that downbeat outlook, many of them are still looking to expand their workforce, according to the 16th “CEOs Speak” survey conducted by the institute. The survey collected responses from 530 CEOs of upstate businesses and nonprofits, including 104 from Western New York.

Only 18% of Western New York CEOs surveyed said they felt business conditions in the state had improved over the past year, while 58% said the conditions had worsened. Those results were more downbeat than the responses for all upstate CEOs in the survey.

“These are strikingly pessimistic numbers, far more pessimistic than we have seen in almost every single year that we have done the survey,” Levy said during a presentation hosted by the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

Levy uses responses from four questions to create an index, in which a score of 100 indicates an equal amount of optimism and pessimism in the marketplace. The score for Western New York CEOs was 61.1. That was almost the same as the 63.2 recorded as the pandemic was hitting the economy, and the lowest since the 37.2 score during the 2008 Great Recession.

“CEOs right now are telling us that they are unsatisfied with economic conditions at present and unfortunately they are not optimistic about the year ahead,” Levy said.

However, not all the upstate CEOs in the survey…