NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss current challenges facing small business owners in the United States. He spoke with Becky Quick and Steve Liesman about findings from NFIB’s September jobs report, focusing on hiring difficulties and ongoing economic uncertainty.
Dunkelberg explained that NFIB surveys businesses each month regarding changes in employment levels and their hiring plans. According to Dunkelberg, “We ask each month a whole bunch of firms about the change in their total employment, and that gives us some idea of what the overall impact of hiring and firing is, and then ask about actual [hiring] plans. And right now, we see that there are a lot of firms that have job openings. There are unfortunately very few that get filled, so plans to fill them are always very optimistic but when the dust clears, very few jobs actually get created. So, that leaves us with a negative number for the net increase in employment for the small businesses that we survey.”
He also addressed how high levels of economic uncertainty affect small business hiring decisions. “I think the uncertainty is about the economy. We have an uncertainty index that is at one of the highest levels that it’s attained in the last 50 years. So, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty and hiring is an investment, and we’re not sure that we want to make those commitments. But the overall picture still is that virtually 90% of the firms that hire or tried to hire say there are few or no qualified applicants for the positions that they have.”
Small business owners continue to face significant obstacles in finding suitable candidates for open positions while dealing with uncertain economic conditions.
