Executives in the wholesale distribution industry are most concerned about new government regulations and their impact on business growth, according to the 2013 McGladrey/NAW Institute Distribution Monitor survey.
While the surveyed executives have positive outlooks for the near future, with 75 percent reporting optimism for the wholesale distribution industry in general, they expected growth to be limited by a variety of issues. The top four most commonly cited threats to growth were government regulation, health reform, increased payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the federal deficit.
"Wholesale distribution companies are growing, and the vast majority expects to continue growing in the coming year," said Patrick Larmon, Bunzl Distribution USA Inc. and 2013 NAW chairman of the board, in a statement. "However, these results demonstrate that distributors still face headwinds on the path to growth, and many of them can be traced back to Washington. Uncertainty about government regulation and the impact of policies like health reform have become a major challenge for these executives."
Respondents predicted wages and the cost of other benefits to increase at an average rate of 4 percent and healthcare costs to increase by an average of 11 percent. Despite these predictions, 63 percent of executives said they expect to add jobs in the next 12 months with average staff increases of 4.4 percent.
