Page 4 - BusinessWest January 6, 2025

Economic Outlook 2025
Uncertainty, Guarded Optimism Abound as the Calendar Turns
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
[email protected]
efore talking about 2025 and what might happen this year, Carol Campbell first wanted to talk about 2024 — and 2023.
The latter was a very solid year for her business, Chicopee Industrial Con- tractors, which specializes in rigging and
machinery installation, and also for the manufactur- ers on its client list. The former? Not so much.
“Almost immediately after the first quarter, we really experienced a lot of peaks and valleys, and I think it was the uncertainty of the election and the uncertainty of the world,” she said. “I talked to people in our industry, and they were all the same — wheth- er union or non-union, it was just ... people were afraid to spend money. They were afraid to borrow money, and they were afraid to spend money.”
But after the election — and Campbell doesn’t think it has much to do with who won — things got better, and orders started coming in. “There was no more uncertainty,” she explained, adding quickly that such sentiment applies strictly to the presidential race.
Indeed, there is a great deal of uncertainty about matters impacting Campbell’s sector — everything from a possible dockworkers’ strike, which would
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