Uncertain Times for Business
From a recent publication from the House of Commons Library entitled – Economic Update: Uncertain Times for Business, we have deduced the following key information.
The picture for economic growth for businesses over the coming months of 2025 is one of little or no growth. Put against a background of virtually no increase in the output of businesses over the past 2 years, especially when taken against a raft of changes during recent months. Business groups have warned policymakers about the challenges being faced by them from changes to government policies, including the rise in National Insurance contributions in April this year and strengthened employment rights etc.
It seems that the size of the business has a direct relation to how positive the outlook is seen, with more, larger companies reporting that their performance has increased than smaller ones. This feeling has not changed for the preceding 2 years. However, it has been reported that the number of companies seeing an increase in performance has actually reduced since 2022 and the number of companies who think that performance will decrease has, conversely increased.
Other common challenges – each faced by just under a fifth of businesses – are the cost of materials (18%), the cost of labour (18%, which will include the cost of pay), competition (18%), and insufficient domestic demand (17%, in other words, not enough UK buyers for what the business is selling).
However, most businesses (80%) say they are not planning to change the size of their workforce immediately. Most (80%) expect their number of employees to stay the same, 5% expect their number of employees to increase, 5% expect their number of employees to decrease and 9% are not sure. About a fifth of larger firms, with workforces of 50 or more, expect their number of employees to increase in March.
The full details of the report including all the statistics can be found at https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/economic-update-uncertain-times-for-business/
So what can we as small business owners do? The first thing is not to panic, as you have, hopefully, built up a core of good customers who are happy to act as brand ambassadors for you. From this, you can build out through referrals and recommendations to form a reasonable, monthly recurring revenue stream which is needed to pay for the additional marketing activities to increase your business. In amongst all of this, it is always worth checking on not only what you think your target market is but also who potential customers think you are targeting – you could be amazed at the perceived differences between the two.
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