Executives have “slightly lower expectations for sales and capital expenditures,” Jim McNerney, chairman of the group and CEO of Boeing Co., said in a statement accompanying the survey. “The continued softness in quarterly sentiment reflects deep uncertainty about the future overall economic climate, realities of a slow-growing economy and frustration over Washington’s inability to resolve looming ‘fiscal cliff’ issues.”

Fed Purchases

Federal Open Market Committee participants on Dec. 12 lowered their forecasts for growth next year. They now see the economy expanding as little as 2.3 percent, compared with at least 2.5 percent in September. The average pace of growth for the decade through 2007 was 3 percent. The economic slowdown is prompting companies to curtail technology spending and pushing consumers to favor mobile devices over personal computers, eroding profitability at Intel Corp.

Chief Financial Officer Stacy J. Smith said in an Oct. 16 call with analysts that the Santa Clara, California-based company will reduce investment in the fourth quarter. Analysts estimate an 11 percent cut next year to $10 billion after a 7.6 percent rise in 2012. The stock has tumbled 15 percent this year.

Capital Budgets

“Semiconductors in general are seeing a lower-than-normal seasonal fourth quarter because we’re already feeling the fiscal cliff,” Doug Freedman, a San Francisco-based RBC Capital Markets analyst, said by phone on Dec. 13. “Capital budgets and people’s nervousness over the ability for macro growth to continue have already affected their spending patterns. Up and down the supply chain, we’re seeing cautionary behavior.”

Clay Jones, the CEO of Rockwell Collins, said in a phone interview on Nov. 7 that the aerospace supplier may cut about 6 percent of its workforce, or about 1,250 jobs, in part to prepare for lower military spending. Defense accounted for about 55 percent of Rockwell Collins’s revenue in the fiscal year ended in September. Shares are up 1.8 percent this year and 20 percent since hitting a low in June. Analysts estimate capital expenditures will decline 6.1 percent in 2013.

“We have no idea within the realm of 10 percent what the defense budget of the U.S. is going to be,” Jones said in an interview from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Nov. 7. “I am planning for the worst.”

Verizon Spending

Verizon, the second-largest U.S. phone company, said on Oct. 18 that spending for the first nine months of the year declined by more than $1 billion from the year-earlier period. Chief Financial Officer Francis Shammo said last month at a conference the number probably won’t rise in 2013.