The Victorian Chamber’s latest Business Voice trend survey highlights a drop in confidence concerning business’ revenue growth, with almost one-third of businesses responding that they are less likely to recruit new staff, compared to one in four just six months ago.

The Victorian Chamber established the first Business Voice survey in November 2022, followed by the second in February 2023.

This latest business survey was conducted between 18 April to 2 May 2023 and is representative of the Victorian business community with a range of small, medium, large and family operations from all industries participating.

Respondents were asked questions around hiring intentions, skilled jobs, financial outlooks and capital investments. Findings included:

Recruitment

A six per cent negative shift since November 2022 in businesses no longer looking to hire new staff (32 per cent responded no, up from 26 per cent in November 2022).

The biggest barrier to hiring new staff is high wage expectations (25 per cent), insufficient applicants for skilled roles (20 per cent), skills gap in the workforce (16 per cent) and insufficient applicants for entry level roles (12 per cent).

Skills

Businesses looking to hire skilled staff has dropped two per cent since February 2023, while businesses willing to take on unskilled staff has jumped four per cent.

Business outlook

More than half of businesses (58 per cent) are not looking to make a capital investment in their business over the next two months.

The majority of businesses who are looking to make a capital investment will be investing less than $2 million (35 per cent).

There has been a 12 per cent drop in business confidence towards revenue growth rising or remaining stable since February 2023.

Eleven per cent of businesses have indicated they expect to experience a decline in revenue.

The Victorian Chamber continues to advocate on behalf of members for State and Federal Governments to address the growing concern over the cost and ease of doing business. 

Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry Chief Executive Paul Guerra said: “The Victorian Chamber’s latest Business Voice survey report reflects what we are hearing anecdotally from our members, that confidence is continuing to drop as we head into challenging economic headwinds. 

“The cost-of-living crisis is not only impacting households; business of all sizes and across all industries are also impacted as they are no longer able to positively predict revenue growth or are bracing themselves for a downturn. This in turn is impacting on business’ willingness to increase their workforce or make significant investments in capital. 

“We hope that the Victorian Government’s 2023-24 Budget will not add to these concerns and instead provide the right environment to empower business to continue driving the State’s economy by providing jobs, investment and innovation. 

"Bolstering business confidence is essential to Victoria’s economic prosperity through increased jobs and economic growth. This allows businesses to then provide greater investment into the community.”