Associated Industries of Massachusetts said Tuesday that its Business Confidence Index was 50, the neutral point of its 1 to 100 scale with 1 being very bad and 100 excellent.
SPRINGFIELD – The state’s labor market appears to be in a holding pattern with most employers unwilling to add staff but at least determined to hold on to the workers they have.
Just 23 percent of the responding executives indicated that they plan to add staff in the next six months, according to a survey released Tuesday by Associated Industries of Massachusetts.
By contrast 13 percent predict that they will have to cut jobs in the next six months.
Looking backward, 35 percent of the employers surveyed said they have added staff while 19 percent report having cut workers, said Andre Mayer, a senior vice president for communications and research at Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a Boston-based business lobbying group.
Overall business confidence in June was at 50 points, the neutral point on Associated Industries’ scale of 1 to 100 and down 1.7 points from the 51.7 points recorded in May.
“Employers just don’t know what to expect,” said Richard B. Collins, president and CEO of United Bank which is headquartered in West Springfield. “It’s hard to get up the requisite enthusiasm to grow in this environment. It’s hard to hire people because of the uncertainty.”
Some entrepreneurs are taking the plunge , Collins said commercial lending is increasing at United Bank. Those commercial loans often result in job creation, at least in one or two jobs at a time.
Michael D. Goodman, chairman of the Department of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth said it is worth noting that businesses are saying their position has improved since the recession. It’s just that prospects are not good enough to justify hiring.
“Clearly when you make an investment in an employee to day you are taking on a number of obligations including fringe benefit cost,” Goodman said.
Respondents also cited difficulty in finding job candidates with requisite skills.
“We’re now back to the skills gap,” said Larry A. Maier, president of Peerless Precision Inc. of Westfield and co-president of the Western Massachusetts Chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Association.
Maier said a recent survey of Chapter members showed that from 2005 to 2010 sales rose 60 percent and employment increased 5 percent.
Much of that growth is local machine shops building component parts for the aircraft and space industries. A lot of that demand is from defense work, Maier said.