- A quick check on the economic recovery seems to indicate that we have bottomed, and that the laser scanning industry is holding its own.
- The US seems to be hit the hardest, but the US government is priming the pump.
- Less than 10% of the $125 billion available from US agencies has been spent when health care and social security are backed out.
I thought I would check in on the issue of the economic recovery. At best I think it is fair to say that the level of demand is not what it was a year ago, and a lot of psychological damage has been done, but in general I think the 3D laser scanning industry is holding it’s own, and in many cases continuing to grow. If you have a data point from your experience that you are willing to share please let me know.
I have heard from different people doing business around the globe that the US economy is experiencing the most pain. Although the stock markets around the world have risen nicely from their lows, and consumer sentiment seems to be improving, unemployment – a lagging, but critically important indicator is still painfully high.
In an attempt to get some sense of the progress that is being made with stimulus spending here in the US I took a look at the Recovery.gov site, and in particular the Investments by Agency report. This is a weekly summary by US government agency of the funds that are available vs. the funds that have been committed. Depending on your point of view, as some of the more veteran business people have been advising, of the $125 billion that is available, only $35 billion has been paid out, and if you take out health care and social security it is less than $10 billion in recovery money that is in the economy, which is less than 10%.
From my point of view, being an optimist, I see this as having tremendous upside potential. Digging a little deeper to support this point of view, the US Army Corps has spent $3 billion out of $117 billion and the Department of the Interior, which includes the USGS has spent $400 million out of $6+ billion. It is unfortunate that these spends are so low, but as we all know the projects where laser scanning is going to be used are going to take some time to fire up. The good news is that less than 10% of the stimulus money has been spent. We just need to get these projects started.
As mentioned above, if you have some info that you are willing to share, about the US market or around the world, please pass it along, and let’s apply whatever pressure we can to get these projects rolling.
