Costs up, profits down – worrying stats from Jersey businesses

The latest States ‘business tendency survey’ shows that 56% of respondents felt their cost of doing business here was going up. Outside of the finance sector, the same percentage was even higher at 64%, the first time such a large number have said that since 2011. At the same time, a third of companies said their profits were falling.

 

Just focussing on the critical finance sector, it was a similar story, with 34% reporting higher input costs, and 22% reporting falling profitability. But more positively, the indicators for employment, business optimism and business activity were all up on the previous quarter. 28% of companies all said they expected to employ more people in the next quarter:

 

For the non-finance sectors, while there were some positive signs, it was the rising costs of trading which will be of concern, with 62% of respondents saying these costs had gone up in the large quarter: