On January 26, the International Sign Association (ISA) hosted their quarterly economic webinar that wrapped up the year with a look at Q4 2020 and the state of the sign industry, as well as their general macroeconomic short and long view. The webinar was based on the ISA Sign Industry Quarterly Economic Report and was presented by Shane Norton and Tory Louis, Director and Senior Consulting Analyst, respectively, of IHS Markit, who produced the report. The report was sponsored by the National Association of Sign Supply Distributors (NASSD).

The session began by providing some macroeconomic context with which you are probably already pretty familiar. The macroeconomic assumptions underlying the sign industry forecast are:

The analysts are rightly worried about the surging virus, and as a result have time-shifted their recovery, even as vaccinations have begun. “It will be through the first half of the year before we get meaningful inoculations,” said Norton. Alleviating matters is government spending which helped support disposable income in 2020 and the new round will keep it going into 2021.