The 2023 Envision Iowa Statewide Leaders Economic Outlook Survey was released at a Business Record event held on Oct. 4, and showed that while leaders continue to believe a thriving Iowa is possible, it will require significant changes to the status quo in a variety of key areas.

More than 3,500 Iowa business and community leaders were invited to participate in the sentiment survey conducted by Business Publications Corporation (BPC) and Bâton Global.

The results of the survey revealed three key findings:

1. Leaders are cautiously optimistic about business opportunities, driven by a strong belief in the economic power of the state’s key industries.
2. Leaders are growing more concerned about population growth and meeting workforce needs across the state of Iowa, affecting their outlook and driving concerns on potential future declines to quality of life for Iowans.
3. Heavy investments in communications infrastructure in 2021 and 2022 are reflected in leaders’ optimistic outlook, also reflecting their concern for the need for heavy investment across social, energy and transportation infrastructure.

The survey is designed to provide forward-looking data, analysis and actionable insights to a broad spectrum of decision-makers across Iowa to further the economic growth and vitality of our state by supporting them in making commercial, investment and public-policy decisions that positively influence Iowa’s long-term economic performance.

The survey focuses on the three critical themes that drive state-level economic performance: people and culture, business opportunities and infrastructure. Within each of the three themes, the survey focuses on the four subthemes that capture the most pressing issues on Iowa’s economic performance agenda for 2024. The 2023 survey asked leaders for their outlook across the key themes and subthemes for the years 2024, 2026 and 2028, to better gauge how participants felt about the future.

We invite you to read and share the full report, which looked at 13 questions under three key themes, to learn what this means to you, your organization and the state of Iowa.

We look forward to engaging with you on these key topics as part of our Envision Iowa series in the future, as we all work to envision a strong and growing community.

View a photo gallery of the event