The Trump Bump: Contractor Confidence Index takes big leap in first post-election survey

In our first WT Contractor Confidence Index since the election of President Donald Trump, the index has soared to 113.3.

That's 15 points higher than the last index we released in August, prior to the election.

We launched the index in 2015 with a survey measuring the confidence level of government contractors. The first survey results set the index at 100. Since then we've repeated the same survey and measured the changes in responses. The index has stayed relatively close to that original 100 level, moving above and below it but always staying within a few points.

For this survey we added an extra question -- which did not count in calculating the index – How will the Trump administration impact the government contracting market. Of our 170 respondents, 56.9 percent said that his administration would drive more growth.

While the response to our Trump question was strongly positive, a significant number, 35.9 percent, said they expect his administration to decrease the number of growth opportunities to decrease.

All of the questions in the regular part of our survey indicated high spirits among government contractors.

When we asked about growth, 58.1 percent said they expect revenue to grow over the next six months, an increase from August when 51.8 percent who said they expected growth.

Only 11.3 percent in the latest survey said they expect revenue to shrink. Interestingly, this compares to 10.8 percent who said they expected a revenue decline in the August survey, so we have a very slight increase in those expecting revenue to shrink.

But that is a small dose of negativity.

Almost every question in our survey saw an increase in positive responses. For example, 58.1 percent think their company will hire more in the next six months. For our last survey, 47.5 percent expected more hiring.

Expected investments in infrastructure bumped up to 34.4 percent from 28.7 percent.

Fewer people said they are currently looking for a job but slightly more said they plan to look for a new job in the next six months – 12.1 percent, compared to 10.9 percent.

But the biggest move was in the response to our question of where the market is headed: 41.8 percent said the market is headed in a positive direction, compared to 28.5 percent who said that in August.

Only 26.1 percent said it was headed in a negative direction and 32 percent it was about the same as last year.

The negative numbers are a big drop from August when 31.6 percent thought the market was headed in a negative direction, while 39.9 percent said it was about the same as last year.

In many ways, these high scores across the survey are a reset for the index. What we'll now be able to measure going forward is whether the Trump administration can build on its positive start or whether it will struggle to meet the market's expectations.

Stay tuned.

Do you feel the market is headed in a positive or negative direction?

Do you expect your company's revenue to grow, shrink or stay the same over the next six months?

Do you expect your company's infrastructure investments to increase, decrease or stay the same?