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Canada Small Business Confidence Rebounds Slightly In April — TradingView News

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Canadian Small Business Confidence

The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) Business Barometer shows a 10-point increase in the long-term index in April 2025, reaching 32.8. This follows a record low the previous month.

Economic Challenges

Despite the rebound, business pessimism remains high, comparable to March 2020. Factors like tariffs, trade wars, and potential trade restrictions significantly impact optimism.

Hiring and Price Increases

Hiring plans also improved slightly but remain below average. More businesses (17%) anticipate layoffs than hiring (14%) over the next year. Planned price increases remain high at 3.5%.

Short-Term Outlook

The short-term optimism index (3-month outlook) increased by 8 points to 40.1.

Canada’s CFIB Business Barometer long-term index, which measures 12-month forward expectations for business performance, rose by 10 points from the record low last month to 32.8 in April of 2025.Despite marking a sharp rebound, the result showed that business pessimism compares with that of March 2020, the start of the pandemic, underscoring the growing impact of tariffs, trade wars and the threat of additional trade restrictions that have severely undermined business optimism.Full-time hiring plans also rebounded slightly in April, but are well below normal for this time of year.More companies plan to lay off workers (17%) than hire (14%) in the next 12 months, while the average planned price increase remained elevated at 3.5%.The short-term optimism index, based on a 3-month outlook, also rose 8 points to 40.1.