The National Federation of Independent Business issued a report on Thursday indicating that job creation among small businesses is increasing. The report is a marker that businesses see significant business growth in the US and abroad.
The percentage of U.S. small business owners saying they planned to add to payrolls in July exceeded those with plans to cut jobs by 19 percentage points on a seasonally adjusted basis, the NFIB data showed. That is a 4-point increase from June and the strongest reading since December 1999. Sixty percent (60%) of owners said they were hiring or trying to hire, a 6-point increase from June.
Although businesses are looking to hire, it appears that having skilled employees remains an issue in creating a more robust economy. Fifty-two percent (52%) of respondents said they had few or no qualified applicants for the positions they wanted to fill, according to the report. Around 35 percent of business owners said they could not fill jobs in July, a 5-point increase from the previous month and a 43-year record high on a quarterly basis.
Also an issue is the increase expenses associated with payroll. Bill Dunkenberg, Chief Economist of NFIB states “The tight labor market is driving up costs for small employers. More than a quarter of all owners reported raising wages in July, and the pressure was especially high in the construction industry.”
The report comes out at a time when the economy added 209,000 jobs in July while the unemployment rate fell to 4.3 percent, the lowest since March 2001, according to a government report Friday.
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