The percentage of small business owners seeking to hire workers rose in June, but so did the share who said they couldn’t find qualified workers, according to a newly released survey by the National Federation of Independent Business.
Overall, 62% of the 405 NFIB members participating in the survey reported they hired–or sought to hire–in June, up seven percentage points from May. But 51% of respondents (a hefty 84% of those seeking to hire) reported they found few or no qualified applicants for the jobs they wanted to fill. The result: 32% of owners said they were unable to fill skilled and/or unskilled jobs, with 27% saying skilled jobs went unfilled and 12% unable to find unskilled labor.
Labor issues have gotten to the point that almost 20% of small business owners told the NFIB that finding qualified workers was the most pressing concern for them. Owners of construction, manufacturing, and service businesses all told the organization they were having serious trouble finding qualified help last month. “While more small businesses are looking to hire, many owners still cannot find qualified workers,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in the group’s release.
Restrictions on immigration no doubt explain some of the hiring problems; the National Association of Home Builders reported immigrants accounted for a third of skilled construction workers in 2024. Plus, hiring experts have pointed to a growing mismatch between workers’ skills and those employers need.
But experts told Forbes they see small business owners being more cautious about hiring–and hence pickier–because of wider uncertainty about the business climate.
“Small businesses are becoming very, very careful about preserving their cash and hiring,” says Bob Coleman, author of the Coleman Report, a trade publication for small business bankers. “That is a consistent theme; it’s been a consistent theme over the last couple of years.”
Coleman says that small firms that survived the global COVID-19 pandemic emerged smarter than before, and are therefore simply being cautious with their bankrolls.
“Small business people, when they hire someone, they want that person to fill an immediate need. And given the choice of hiring, of letting it go unfilled, or hiring a stopgap, they’re just going to wait for the right person, because it’s so expensive to hire people these days,” Coleman adds. “A friend of mine pointed this out, and said, ‘Bob, I just hired someone, and I pay her more than I pay for my house payment. That is a significant investment, and you want to get it right.”
Jay Caplan, co-founder of Tuross Group, which provides financial operations for small businesses, tells Forbes he’s also hearing a lot of nervousness in the small business community these days. Caplan says it’s only natural that many would pull back on hiring in order to preserve cash, as they’ve watched inflation run rampant over the past year. “What I’m seeing is, owners are asking, can they do more with their existing team that they have before committing to another salary?” Caplan says. “They’re really, really drilling down on that.”
Caplan adds there’s “definitely a shortage” of skilled workers to fill open positions, but that with unskilled labor, the lack of hiring is more about small businesses trying to be fiscally conservative, given the financial strains laid on them by the Trump administration.
“Not to talk political, but I think a lot of people are really, really nervous,” Caplan says, adding that his firm has a lot of clients in the distribution space. “When you’re looking at your fuel costs going up by 20%, 30%, and you’re transporting a lot of stuff around, that starts to hit home.”
Still, according to the NFIB, survey respondents who did want to hire pointed directly to difficulty finding qualified workers. A construction company owner in South Carolina told the NFIB: “One of the biggest challenges is recruiting and retaining qualified plumbing technicians with experience. Because we are located outside of a major metropolitan area, attracting skilled candidates to a smaller town can be more difficult.” The owner of a Wisconsin janitorial company commented: “Unskilled labor is very tough to find! […] Other businesses would like to contract us (they can’t find people, so we get more work). However, we have to turn work away due to not being able to hire anyone! Yes, it’s ‘just’ a cleaning job – but we pay competitive rates, offer paid vacation, paid holidays, insurance, retirement plan, etc. – and still can’t find anyone!”
Whether because of qualified labor shortages or a general cautiousness about the economy, small business hiring has basically stagnated for the past four months, with the NFIB’s employment index registering 100.2, down from 100.3 in May, which both reflect a weaker labor market. The most recent quarter’s index was consistently below the average for the 2025 calendar year average of 101.2, though above the historical average of 100.
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