West Michigan industrial companies showed their strongest growth rate in a year during March, according to the latest survey by Brian G. Long, director of Supply Management Research in the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University.
“Not only has spring arrived, but the veiled pessimism that tainted last month’s reports has generally dissipated,” said Long, who conducts a monthly survey of local purchasing managers. “Overall, this report is the best we have filed in about a year.”
Long said his index of new orders and purchasing activity more than doubled while his production index nearly doubled over February. Employment levels also rose, he said.
“Given the improved statistics, it was not surprising to find that most of our industrial groups are seeing improvement,” Long said. “Despite auto sales showing signs of topping out, our local auto parts producers continue to attract additional business.
“The office furniture business is starting to come out of its seasonally slow period, and the improvement in rental of new office space in some of the big cities has helped to boost demand,” Long said.
“The only significant drag on this month’s report came from the capital equipment firms, several of which appear to have encountered a soft spot in the marketplace.”
Long said his business outlook survey also showed “a considerable uptick” in optimism for the long term and short term.
“More importantly the comments from our participants were considerably more upbeat for March,” Long said. “It may have just been the fatigue of winter finally wearing off, although the same uptick in optimism may also be found at the national and international economic levels.”
Long said West Michigan’s labor markets are doing much better than most of the state.
“Among the unemployment rates in the 83 Michigan counties, Ottawa County has the second-lowest rate of 3.7 percent, followed by third place Kent County coming in at 3.8 percent.
“Kalamazoo County took fourth place at 4.3 percent, and both Allegan and Barry counties posted a jobless rate of 4.7 percent,” Long said.
“Because these data are not seasonally adjusted, all of these rates are higher than those reported for December, when seasonal employment is always higher than the rest of the year.”
Source: Mlive.com