Dive Brief:

• Contractors were modestly confident that they would be doing more business, making a little more money and hiring a few more people, according to the latest results from Associated Builders and Contractors' (ABC) Contractor Confidence Index.
• The results, calculated in six-month intervals, are from the second and third quarters of last year. (ABC uses one year's fourth quarter and the next year's first quarter for the other six-month measure.)
• Numbers were positive – above 50 – for questions about sales expectations, profit margins and staffing levels, but "up small" was the most popular answer choice in all three.

Dive Insight:

ABC Chief Economist Anirban Basu, analyzing the results and more-recent data, said the bitter winter has depressed a lot of numbers, but he believes the contractors will pick up their pace when the weather warms. The winter's effects should be seen in the next confidence index, which will contain the last three months of 2013 and the grueling first three months of this year.