And finally. The long dark tunnel of the 2008-10 recession is over, and we’ve burst forth into the sunny springtime of the next boom period.
At least, that’s what you might think from the headline results from our regular quarterly survey of engineering opinion. For the first time since the third quarter of 2007, all the indicators on the two graphs above are on the positive side of the zero baseline, meaning that optimism is universal: we’re happy about the work that we’ve done in the past three months and looking forward to the work that is to come in the next quarter.
End of story? Not quite. Among the good news, there is just an inkling of doubt about the future. Engineers think things are looking up for their companies and organisations, for their sectors and for engineering as a whole, but they’re marginally less confident looking forward than they were three months ago.
Let’s go back to the start and explain what we do in these quarterly surveys. They aren’t much different from the surveys that bodies such as the CBI and the EEF put together, but whereas those organisations ask companies for their views, we ask individual readers. That means we get a view from the places where the work is actually done, rather than from a head office, and though the views are often broadly similar to the other surveys – see page 4 – there are shades of meaning and inference that you don’t get elsewhere.
We ask our readers whether the workload in their workplace was greater, less or much the same as before in the three months just gone – and we then ask the same question about workload in the business sector in which they operate and for the whole of engineering. Those “historic” questions form the basis of the graph on the left.
We then turn the questions around and ask the same about our readers’ views of workload in the coming three months – for company, sector and engineering as a whole. Do they expect work to be greater, less or much the same as it has been? The answers to those questions form the second graph.
In both graphs, we take the percentage of respondents who give us a “positive” reply to each question and subtract the percentage who give a negative response, leaving a “balance” figure that could be anywhere between +100 and –100. A small caveat is that because this survey is based on perceptions of increasing (or decreasing) workload, you can’t absolutely say, when all the indicators are positive, that it’s good times: it may just be better than it was.
The answers for this survey came from 390 PE readers from all sectors: this isn’t just an “industry” survey, but also reflects engineering workload in other employers, such as businesses, academia and consultancies. And the gist of the results is that in most places things have got better.
Back in the first quarter report at the end of March, our readers reported a +32 positive balance for the work in their own workplaces: that’s now advanced in June to +34. This is pretty good, but if you look to the left of the left-hand graph, you’ll see that, in historic terms, it’s not that brilliant – in the balmy days before the fall, this figure was regularly running at +40 and more. So it’s good, but not that good.
If that sounds a bit over-gloomy, then it’s harder to be tough on the other figures in the backwards-look graph. For our readers’ business sectors, we’ve advanced from +12 to +18 in the last quarter; for engineering as a whole, we’re finally out of negative territory with an advance from -1 to +17. All told, and with the above proviso, you’d have to say the past three months have been engineering’s best period for more than two years.
So what about the three months to come? Again, on the surface, all looks well. All three indicators are positive, as they have been since the third quarter of 2009. But this time, there’s a marginal falling back on all three lines of the graph on the right. We still think things are getting better, but there is a small diminution of confidence. Are readers worried about a double-dip recession?
Maybe not. As usual, we ask two summary questions. The first wants to know whether readers feel the past year has been a good period for engineering, and for the first time for a very long time, we’ve got a positive result: 46% say Yes, 42% say No and 12% are undecided. That cements the feeling that the worst of the recession was about a year ago, possibly slightly more.
The second one asks whether readers feel the coming year will be a good period for engineering, and again we’ve marched forward – we’re up to a positive balance of +25, up from just +6 in March.
So what has been the big change in all of our lives in the past three months? The arrival of a new government ought to rate highly on the importance scale. But this is all very strange. As usual, we ask our readers to rate which one, from a series of factors, they regard as the biggest threat to engineering’s health and wealth over the coming year.
In March, as the Brown government was limping its way to the ballot box, the numbers feeling the government was the biggest threat rose from 32% to 39% – the highest ever. This time, in the first flush of a Cameronian coalition, the numbers thinking the government is the big threat have… stayed exactly the same: 39%. And the second “favourite” threat, the loss of business to lower-cost alternative locations, remains constant at 24%, as does the 10% writing in that the credit crunch and other economic factors are the top worry.
So it may look better on the surface. But underneath, some things just haven’t changed.