A new study revealed that chief financial offices and top accounts believe the economy has entered a recession, the Triangle Business Journal reported.

In the survey, which was done by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and the Durham, N.C.-based American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, more than 1,180 CPAs who were senior-level executives at their companies were questioned; and approximately 62 percent of respondents said they were pessimistic or very pessimistic about the U.S. economic outlook over the next 12 months.

Only 10 percent of the respondents expressed optimism about the economy.

“It is hard to see much good news here,” Mark Lang, a professor of accounting at Kenan-Flagler, said in a statement. “There were some hopeful signs in last quarter’s survey suggesting that the economy might be bottoming out, but weakness persists across the board. The fact that firms continue to reduce planned growth in capital investment, staff development and employment is particularly troubling since it suggests that the slowdown could have longer-term implications.”

Internal optimism was greater than all-encompassing economic optimism, with more than 35 percent of respondents saying they were optimistic or very optimistic about their own business’s prospects. However, that’s down from 45 percent in the second quarter.

The study also found that nearly three-quarters of poll respondents rejected the idea of a second federal stimulus and the support for offshore oil drilling was low at 35 percent.