business planning in uncertain times

In his recent missives, economist Elliot Eisenberg shares his perspective on where some of the major concerns are coming from.

Consumer confidence is plummeting, declining due to the uncertainty of the market, stock prices, job losses, salary freezes by some companies and increased daily costs due to tariffs. Recent surveys show consumer confidence sank 11%, the lowest it’s been since the pandemic (2020 to 2022), and factoring out those COVID years, it’s the worst level of confidence since 1980, according to Eisenberg. For context, Bob Dylan was only 39 in 1980.

Consumer pessimism has been broad-based and seen across all groups by age, education, income, wealth, political affiliation and geography. Unemployment expectations are at their worst since March of 2009.

CEOs are feeling a bit of a whiplash. After a significant rise in CEO optimism in the months following the November election, CEO confidence fell 20% in early March 2025 compared to January and is now at its lowest level since spring 2020, during COVID. Making things worse, CEO forecasts for what conditions will be like in a year fell 28% from January and are at their lowest level since November 2012. Their stocks are down and the market is softening, so it’s hard to see this boosting hiring or capital expenditures.

In my weekly conversations with senior leaders throughout the industry, whether they focus on commercial or residential, new construction or R&R, it is inevitable I will hear the word “uncertainty” a handful of times. Here is what I’m hearing from a sample set of several C-Suite leaders over the last few weeks.

• Manufacturers have apprehension about how the tariffs are impacting their cost structure. 90 percent of the companies we talked with are currently being negatively impacted by the tariffs, either through the raw materials or components, or the finished products they source from abroad. We know manufacturers are at the front of the value chain, so price increases impact the balance of the market.

• Manufacturers in several product categories have already put out price increase announcements trying to address the tariff impact; the quandary is what percent increase should they commit to? As we know, as the value chain adds their margins on to it, it’s the homebuyer or homeowner who will ultimately pay the increase—unless they decide to push off buying a home or doing that R&R project.

• Builders are trying to price a home that will be built over the next several months—with tariffs and material cost increases, it’s hard to know what level of profit they could make. It was telling to see Lennar Homes starting to discount their homes in Texas and Florida (once two of the fastest growth markets) to help buy down the interest rate.

• Developers, architects and general contractors are deciding on the materials they need to meet the performance and design criteria, but also the budget of a building they are designing today which won’t be completed for 14-18 months. This uncertainty may drive a considerable uptick on the value engineering at the back end of the building process.

• Contractors have similar issues to builders, but their project timelines are shorter, so their job quotes are only good for 30 to a maximum of 60 days. As a result, they have a little more leeway on incorporating actual market costs into their quote. Good news, they are still seeing momentum on projects, but it’s more of the smaller projects being requested. The $80K kitchen remodels and backyard makeovers are slowing due to declining consumer confidence.

• Labor remains a huge issue for all types of jobs. While hiring and training new labor has been a challenge for the last several years, unfortunately there is a newer issue to contend with: finding workers that are comfortable showing up to the job site. According to our partner Black//Brown, an agency focused on helping manufacturers more strongly engage the Latino population, over 50% of the industry’s workforce is Latino, and 30% of the contractor business owners are Latino. However, many workers (documented or not) may not feel comfortable showing up to the job site due to recent threats of deportation.

Despite so much uncertainty, there are a few things that are certain. People are staying in their homes longer, and according to LIRA forecasts, we are seeing a moderate uptick in the R&R market this year, maybe 2-2.5% growth. In a typical 12-month span we see around 55 million home improvement projects happening. This scale of projects will probably still be the case (if not a few more), but the projects may be on the small- and medium-side versus large.

With new construction starts dipping, there is still need for housing, so we may see multi-family not have as big of a dip as was forecast a few months ago. This is good news for those who sell into that market. The only difference may be the build type may be less luxury and more of the midpoint of the market.

Multi-billion-dollar chip plants as well as more moderate data centers are being built at a fast pace, adding not only those buildings, but also the community infrastructure to support them.

While the times they are a-changing ... in markets like this, successful companies find those areas for their products and solutions that are still positive growth opportunities. When you dig into the market more deeply, there are definitely places (geos, segments, commercial verticals, etc.) in the markets that are still winning. The goal is finding what’s a winning market for your business.

We are helping our clients find those spots and putting focus and priority on investments to weather the uncertainty and find a path to growth in the industry. To help navigate these times, Interrupt is conducting Scenario Planning Workshops to help put growth plans together for manufacturers in the industry. Reach out if you are interested in finding your winning space in the market.