Dive Brief:

• Companies that see too much economic and government uncertainty to be hiring are unlikely candidates to become construction industry customers for new space.

• A recent survey by a group called the National Center for the Middle Market asked 1,000 executives about their plans and heard that they are concerned about rising costs, such as worker health care.

• The results were not all bad news: A third of companies said they do expect to be hiring in 2014, but it appears that it is unlikely to happen in the first quarter of the year.

Dive Insight:

The companies in the survey have revenues between $10 million and $1 billion. The survey was done in a partnership with GE Capital and The Ohio State University. A majority of the executives said they expect growth by the end of this year, but they think last year will turn out to have been better — and that is not encouraging for the companies that would build their buildings.