NFIB: 46 Pct Of SMBs Have Unfilled Job Openings

Forty-six percent of small business owners say they had job openings they couldn’t fill, a report from NFIB says.

That’s down two percent from May.

But, the report notes, it’s still above the 48-year historic average of 22 percent, with small business owners still not doing terribly well finding qualified workers. The report found that there was a dearth of “qualified” workers, with 89 percent of businesses now finding it difficult to hire employees they deemed qualified for open positions in June 2021.

There was a 39 percent rate of users reporting raising compensation, or up five points. And 26 percent have plans to raise compensation in the next few months.

And sixty-three percent of owners had hired or planned to hire in June 2021.

There was also a 28 percent of users who were reportedly planning to make new jobs within three months, the report says.

The report says 40 percent of owners had openings for skilled workers, which was unchanged, while 22 percent reported openings for unskilled labor, which was a five point decrease from the last time this information was reported.

In terms of the companies’ biggest problems, 26 percent said the largest issue was that labor quality wasn’t what they needed. And eight percent also said that they were having problems with labor costs.

PYMNTS wrote in early June that there was a report of 48 percent of small business owners that said they needed help hiring people due to the reopening after the pandemic. And NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said the labor shortage was “holding back” growth for small businesses.

He said small businesses would get more sales and see things going back to how they’d been pre-pandemic if there were more workers to help handle customer needs.

The recent PYMNTS survey, After Vaccines: What Mass Vaccinations Mean for Main Street Merchants, found that SMBs were optimistic about the return of old conditions.