A significant proportion of medium-sized retail businesses in Austria do not expect the current unfortunate situation to improve any time soon. This emerges from a current study by the Creditreform Economic Research Institute, which was published on Monday.
As part of the study on the situation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), for which around 1,400 Austrian companies were surveyed, only 12.3 percent of companies in the retail sector stated that their sales had recently increased. However, revenues declined at 37.7 percent.
The expectations regarding sales development in the next six months are also not particularly positive. 13.2 percent of retail companies are currently expecting increases, 31.6 percent are expecting losses.
This also has an impact on the workforce. Only 4.4 percent of the trading companies surveyed want to increase their staff. 23.7 percent intend to reduce the number of employees.
According to the study, not only many medium-sized companies in the retail sector complained about falling income. The majority of companies surveyed from the manufacturing, construction and services sectors also reported weak business and were rather pessimistic about the future. Overall, “the Austrian middle class is standing still economically,” summarized Creditreform. “After two years of recession, there is no recovery.”