Businesses are feeling pretty good these days.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

Earlier today we got the latest survey of business conditions from the National Association for Business

Economics. All around it was pretty good. Very few businesses are expecting a

recession in the next year. Profit margins and sales are up. Julia Cornato is here to talk about it.

She's founder of Macro Policy perspectives and a professor at UT Austin and a former

NAB president. Hi Julia. Good morning. So more businesses reported positive profit margins, the negative margins, and that's the first time

that's happened since April of 2022.

That is an important development. You see businesses starting the year with a bit more

optimism about their prospects, which could again be a self-reinforcing dynamic that keeps the economy on track.

91 percent. 91 percent of businesses that responded to the survey say a recession is

unlikely in the next 12 months. That's up quite a bit from

three months ago. Is that just solidifying the idea that recession is just

not on its way? Well it definitely indicates that businesses don't think one is imminent and if

they're not seeing an imminent weakening in their sales or profits then they're

less likely to lay off workers or pull back on investments.

72% of businesses that responded said they are passing all or some of their cost increases to

customers.

That's a little weird because from a lot of corners of the economy we're hearing, cost

increases are not, they're not as bad.

That's right.

Inflation has been slowing very rapidly and other surveys indicate that companies don't have the

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