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39% of local businesses have cited Jersey’s internal financial regulation as a ‘key issue’ for the next six months.
This is the first time this issue has been in the top three, having increased by 31 percentage points from 8% in December 2018, according to data published by Statistics Jersey as part of the latest Business Tendency Survey.
Other key issues were external financial regulations (56%) and staff skills (53%).
Pictured: The key issues in December 2018 and December 2019.
The island’s reputation – which had been among the most-cited issues since June 2011 - went down by 12pp.
While staff skills were the second most-cited issues in December 2019, 40% of finance companies said they expect employment to be higher in December 2020, compared to a quarter (23%) expecting a decrease and 37% for whom no change is expected.
A quarter (25%) of finance companies expect to hire less than 5% more employees before the end of the year. 15% of companies expect an increase of 5% or more.
Pictured: 37% of finance companies are not expecting any change in employment.
In comparison, 21% of non-finance companies expected to see employment decrease, with 15% expecting an increase.
Turning to business activity - which is a measure of the total amount of work undertaken by businesses operating in Jersey – a quarter (27%) of businesses reported an increase, while a fifth (22%) reported a decline and the remaining 51% saw no change.
Business activity indicator was significantly up on September for finance, essentially unchanged for non-financehttp://ow.ly/hKDh50y7V2E pic.twitter.com/Un5CfR0HMc
— Statistics Jersey (@JsyStats) January 30, 2020
The business activity indicator was positive for the finance sector (+17 pp) and neutral for the non-finance sector (0 pp).
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