Manufacturers Busy Making Rosy Forecasts

Manufacturers in the county are pretty upbeat these days, says Chapman University economist Raymond Sfeir.

He conducts a quarterly survey of purchasing department managers at county-based manufacturing firms, and reported recently that his survey’s economic confidence index rose slightly in the fourth quarter to its highest reading since the first quarter of 1995.

The index, which measures things like productivity, new orders, employment trends and raw material costs, found manufacturers of machinery, computer equipment, electronic equipment, medical and scientific instruments and transportation equipment to be most sanguine about what the next few months might hold.

The confidence index measured 62.5, up from 61.4 in the third quarter. It compared with a national manufacturing confidence index of 52.3. Readings higher than 50 measure improvement in the way the industry views economic and business conditions while readings below 50 measure declines.

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John O’Dell covers major Orange County corporations and manufacturing for The Times. He can be reached at (714) 966-5831 and at john.odell@latimes.com.