The inability to find employees to fill job openings continues to hamper Arizona’s and the nation’s Main Street, mom-and-pop enterprises, according to the latest Jobs Report released on Thursday by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), America’s leading small-business association.
The NFIB Jobs Report is a national snapshot of the small-business-owning membership of NFIB and is not broken down by state. It’s released on the first Thursday of every month and is followed on the second Tuesday of every month by the Small Business Economic Trends report (aka the Optimism Index), which measures 10 components, including the data from the Jobs Report.
“While Election Day will not provide an overnight cure for the economic ills facing small businesses in Arizona, hopefully voters who care about small mom-and-pop businesses will inform their vote with the recommendations from the NFIB Arizona political action committee,” said Chad Heinrich, Arizona state director for NFIB.
“The labor shortage remains a challenging problem for small business owners. Because of staffing shortages, small business owners are less able to take full advantage of current sales opportunities and continue to make business adjustments to compensate.” Highlights from the Jobs Report
- 23% of owners report labor quality as their top business problem, second to inflation.
- Of those hiring or trying to hire, 90% of owners reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
- Of the nine industries measured in the report, transportation (68%) and construction (63%) were having the biggest difficulties in filling job openings.