Staff Report
Published Dec. 8, 2008

Businesses in all three major metropolitan areas of South Carolina are more optimistic about general business conditions than those nationally, but everyone is being cautions for the next 90 days, according to a survey of readers in Charleston, Columbia and the Upstate.

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SC Biz News LLC is partnering with the College of Charleston’s Tate Center for Entrepreneurship to provide a real-time snapshot of the business climate in regional areas of South Carolina through the next 12 months. The Daily Journal and its sister publications, GSA Daily in the Upstate and the Daily Report in the Midlands, surveyed readership last week.

Tate Center Director John Clarkin provided analysis of the survey and compared it with national numbers from the National Federation of Independent Business “Small Business Economic Trends” report published in November.

“The NFIB used a seasonal adjustment to its data that we were not able to use in our analysis, but it should provide us with a rough measure of comparison,” Clarkin said. “The NFIB used several of these questions to calculate its ‘Index of Small Business Optimism.’”

In October, that index fell 5.4 points to 87.5, the third-lowest reading in the 35-year history of the survey.

“We used the same questions as those used by the NFIB in their national survey to look at three regions of South Carolina — Charleston, Columbia and Greenville — and to compare them to the national numbers revealed in the NFIB survey,” Clarkin said.

Question 1 asked about the outlook for general business conditions six months from now:

In the NFIB national survey of business owners, the outlook across the country was -4% (the net percentage of those who believed the outlook was better minus the percentage of those who thought the outlook was worse).

In the Charleston region, the net percentage was 3.5%, while the Greenville area recorded a larger positive reading at 5.8%. Columbia area respondents were the most optimistic, with a net percentage of 11.7%. S.C. respondents are clearly more optimistic about the general business conditions than the national average.

Question 2 examined an outlook for the volume of goods or services respondents expected to sell during the next three months.

The NFIB study found that, on a national level, the net percentage was negative, with 16% more projecting lower sales volumes than those projecting higher sales volumes. In this measure, S.C. respondents were clearly less optimistic than the national average.

Twenty-five percent more Charleston-area respondents projected decreased volume than those who projected an increase in the next 90 days. Similar numbers were found in Columbia, at -21.7%, and the most negative was found in Greenville, with -26.5%. It is clear that the outlook for products and services is not good for the next three months.

Question 3 addressed the expected changes in the labor market during the next three months.

On a national level, the outlook for employment was one of the lowest in the history of the survey, with a net of zero employers expecting to create jobs in the next three months.

In this element, S.C. respondents were much less optimistic than the national average. In the three regions, Charleston recorded a net of -16.5%, while Columbia respondents were less optimistic with a net of -18.9%. Greenville area respondents were the least optimistic in terms of their employment outlook, with a score of -25% in this question.

“Overall, it appears that South Carolina respondents are more optimistic about the ability of the economy in the United States to recover in the next six months, but they are far more pessimistic about the next 90 days in terms of volume of goods and services sold and number of jobs created by businesses in our state,” Clarkin said.