Small businesses have a hiring problem. According to the July monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 19% of small businesses rank the inability to find quality labor as the single most important issue facing their company, while 38% reported job openings they could not fill. Overall, 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
"Most people who want a job have a job, so there are very few out there actively looking," says Holly Wade, NFIB's executive director of research. The U.S. unemployment rate has hovered around 4% in 2024-and although it's been slowly ticking upwards, the talent pool for small businesses remains tight. Moreover, worker demographics evolved during the pandemic years.
"There were so many baby boomers who retired, and we had a huge shift of early retirees. All of that takes time to normalize, so we have this massive shift in the composition of the labor market."
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