EY SME Barometer: Pessimism despite good business situation

Despite the current difficult economic environment with a gloomy economy, increased prices for energy and raw materials and high inflation, Austrian companies are satisfied with their own business situation: a good four out of five companies (82%) rate their own business situation as fairly good or good. 18 percent of those surveyed currently assess their own business situation as negative.

However, more companies expect their own business situation to worsen (21%) than to improve (17%). This means that around one in five companies expect their own situation to worsen in the coming year.

“Austrian companies are not letting themselves get down, but the difficult economic conditions are slowly having an impact on the overall mood,” says Erich Lehner, Managing Partner Markets and responsible for medium-sized companies at EY Austria, assessing the results of the new EY medium-sized business barometer. For which over 600 managers from medium-sized, non-capital market-oriented companies with 30 to 2,000 employees were surveyed across Austria in November 2023.