The economy’s improvement has been steady over the last few years, but as many small business owners know all too well, it has also been somewhat slow. As such, hiring hasn’t taken as big a step forward as many experts would like, even if positive strides are, in fact, being made.
Small business owners nationwide hired an average of of 0.11 workers per company through the end of May, marking the eighth straight month in which an improvement of any size was made, according to a report from the National Federation of Independent Business. This actually constituted the longest string of consecutive improvements in this regard since 2006, prior to the onset of the economic downturn itself. However, not everything has gone well for these companies of late, and one of the things that may be holding them back from broader improvement is the fact that many might be a little too picky about who they hire.
“Fifty-five percent of the owners hired or tried to hire in the last three months and 46 percent reported few or no qualified applicants for open positions,” said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. “GDP declined in the first quarter, so one would expect reduced labor demand. However, this did not occur. Twenty-four percent of all owners reported job openings they could not fill in the current period (unchanged), providing some downward pressure on the unemployment rate. Fourteen percent reported using temporary workers, unchanged for several months. Job creation plans continued to strengthen and rose 2 percentage points to a seasonally adjusted net 10 percent, approaching ‘normal’ levels for a growing economy, even with no growth last quarter.”
How problematic are these failures to fill job openings?
Today, the number of open positions companies have not been able to fill are at their highest level since the middle of 2007, but the good news is that many companies apparently plan to create more jobs in the near future, the report said. Nonetheless, these figures are still 10 percentage points below the all-time high.
Owners who want to make sure their companies are in the best position possible to bring on new workers and succeed in doing so might want to think about the ways in which they can reduce their firms’ ongoing costs, such as those for small business insurance. If they are able to shop around for more affordable general liability insurance coverage, they might be able to save thousands annually.
