By AZ Business Magazine
The education system and quality and availability of workforce are still top concerns for local business leaders, according to Alliance Bank of Arizona’s 2017 Arizona Leaders in Business Survey. In a broadly positive set of findings about the state’s business climate, respondents also named healthcare costs as a top business challenge, moving this issue up by 10 percentage points over the inaugural 2016 survey and into this year’s list of top three business challenges.
In last year’s survey, 50% of business leaders named education as their number one concern and while still at the top of this year’s list, that number dropped to 38% suggesting some progress on this salient issue. Overall, the top three business challenges in Arizona in 2017 are quality/availability of workforce (40%), education (38%) and healthcare costs (34%). In last year’s survey, business leaders cited education first (50%), followed by quality/availability of workforce (41%) and state government (27%).
