Business Confidence is a key indicator of future investment, often shown to align with local job creation, capital expansion, and GDP growth. The Chamber deploys its “Saskatoon Business Barometer” survey in Q4 every year to benchmark business confidence annually and shape pro-growth policy development at the local and provincial level.

As we close out 2023 and prepare for 2024 Saskatoon businesses remain confident about the city’s economic outlook, according to a city-wide survey conducted by the Saskatoon Chamber.

Despite this positive outlook, respondents continue to cite a number of challenges to business growth. The most frequently mentioned factor was Inflation (24%) up from 17% last year, an issue not mentioned in the 2021 business barometer results. Labour supply also continues to rank highly as one of the top challenges to business growth.

This year businesses were asked if they had incurred increased expenses due to property damage as a result of crime and vandalism and/or increased expenses after taking measures to prevent vandalism. 38% of respondents indicated that they had, with 35% of respondents citing an increase of more than 5% in added expenses for preventative measures.

Other highlights from the 2023 Saskatoon Business Barometer survey include:

Revenue

• In alignment with 2022, approximately 62% of businesses expect their revenue to increase in the next 12 months. Another 29% expect revenue to stay the same, up from 22% a year ago. Notably 9% of businesses expect their revenues to decrease down from the 16% in 2022.

Growth Challenges

• When it comes to challenges to business growth, the top 3 most frequently mentioned factors are inflation (24%), labour supply (21%) and customer demand (14%).

Supply Chain

• Three fourths (76%) are more confident about acquiring the goods and services they need to operate their daily business, up from 68% last year. 

Government

• Respondents cited an overall worsening ability to connect with all levels of government over the last 12 months. 41% of respondents indicated a worsening experience in connecting with the Federal government compared to last year (24%). Provincially 26% cited more difficult compared to 13% in 2022 and municipally 35% compared to last year (18%).
• One in five of businesses agree that the current level of municipal taxation and fees in Saskatoon reflects the level of services provides, largely unchanged since last year (21%).