Fears within hospitality and construction as finance prospers

Friday 21 July 2023

Business activity in hospitality and construction was "strongly negative" in the second quarter of the year, the latest business tendency survey has revealed.

While June's report by Statistics Jersey says the position across all business sectors was "moderately positive", it was strongly influenced by the strength of the finance sector where the proportion of businesses reporting an increase in activity was 37% higher than those reporting a decrease.

Setting aside responses from the finance sector, the position was neutral with an increase of only one percentage point in other businesses reporting increased activity.

Meanwhile, the activity indicator for the three months since March was "strongly negative" for hotels, restaurants and bars at minus 30 percentage points, and for construction at minus 25. Positive responses of 14 points in wholesale and retail, and 11 for other non-finance business helped redress the balance.

The quarterly survey is intended to provide up-to-date information about the island's economy, based on the opinions of chief executives and managing directors about the current situation of their business compared to three months earlier, and their expectations for the next three months.

June's report describes the overall position as "essentially the same as last quarter" and it gives a "moderately positive" outlook for the current third quarter with expectations for finance continuing to outstrip the rest of the business economy.

However, the indicator for future input costs remained universally negative across both finance and non-finance business.

Employment expectations within the finance sector were "extremely positive" and slightly up at 59 percentage points on the position at the same time last year.

Read the full report HERE.