Industrial Confidence Indicator

The Industrial Confidence Indicator describes the current evaluation of the development of manufacturing companies and expectations for the next quarter. The indicator is based on factor analysis involving surveys among the leading industry representatives, representing all sectors of the manufacturing industry. The sample size for the eurozone is about 20 thousand companies.

Respondents are asked to provide a qualitative evaluation of:

• Total number of current orders (more than sufficient, sufficient or insufficient).
• Current stocks (very large, normal for the current season, very small).
• Production volume in three months (whether production is expected to grow, fall or remain unchanged).

The resulting index is “balanced” at value 0 (equally many positive and negative responses), meaning that a positive number indicates a surplus of positive answers, and a negative value indicates a surplus of negative answers in the survey.

The Industrial Confidence Indicator is a good indicator of the current and future business climate.

For the three geographical markets Sweden, Germany and EU, the Industrial Confidence Indicator has grown during 2020 showing higher values in December 2020 than in December 2019. For Sweden, the Industrial Confidence Indicator has shown positive values since August 2019, while in Germany and EU overall the confidence has been negative throughout the year.

A large decrease following the Covid-19 outbreak can be observed, but in all three markets the Industrial Confidence Indicator recovered from these values.