I attended today’s meeting sponsored by the Rockford Area Economic Development Corporation. The speaker was Rebecca Steffenson from NIU and she reported on the Global Economy Survey that was conducted recently with a number of local manufacturing companies. I completed the survey, so I wanted to know what the results were. RAEDC will be posting the complete survey on their web site, but here are a few factoids:
1. The Rockford Metro area (Boone and Winnebago counties) exports $1.2 billion to international markets representing 2.3% of the state’s exports and ranks 106th in the U.S.
2. Size of the companies surveyed were 11.1% employed 10-20 workers; 35% employed 21-100 workers and 54% employed 100+ employees.
3. 77% of the companies surveyed export.
4. 42.1 of the companies had export sales of0-5% of their sales; 31.6 of the companies had export sales of 6-15%of their total sales while 10.5% had exports 16-20% of their total sales.
There were many other charts and pieces of data explaining advantages and disadvantages to the Rockford location; how companies go about finding export business and other factors relating to this business.
An interesting survey with good information. Check RAEDC’s web site to get the full story.
