Rising CEO Confidence, Sort Of

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Money_stack_pic_2The CEO Confidence Index from Chief Executive magazine showed a slight up-tick in January.  Corpoate chiefs are still very cautious on labor conditions, and this index was just at another all-time low the month before.  But the reading is above the all-time lows.  Sometimes the criteria for good news is different from normal.

The index rose 10.3 points to 51.2 points in January.  The EmploymentConfidence Index rose from 22 to 35.3 points, and the BusinessCondition Index rose to 27 points from 16.8 last month.

Edward M. Kopko, CEO and Publisher of Chief Executive magazine said,"While the recent uptick is encouraging, it does not imply that CEOshave started to gain confidence…. The low reading of the employmentconfidence…. is suggestive of a continued poor labor market over thecoming months."

It also appears that many CEOs believe they will come out ahead if theycan use the current environment to their advantage. The magazine reaches about 42,000 CEOs and has a readership of 220,000.  This survey was based upon 543respondents.

Keep in mind that this is a different group than the CEO Roundtable.

Jon C. Ogg
February 5, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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