In an NFIB survey, 84% of small business owners looking to hire said they found few or no suitable candidates for their jobs.
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The percentage of small business owners looking to hire workers rose in June, but so did the percentage who said they couldn’t find skilled workers, according to a recently released overview by the National Federation of Independent Business.
Overall, 62% of the 405 NFIB members surveyed reported hiring – or trying to hire – in June, an increase of seven percentage points from May. However, 51% of respondents (a whopping 84% of job seekers) reported finding few or no suitable candidates for the jobs they wanted to fill. The result: 32% of employers said they were unable to fill skilled and/or unskilled jobs, with 27% saying skilled jobs remained vacant and 12% unable to find unskilled labor.
Labor issues have reached the point where nearly 20% of small business owners told the NFIB that finding skilled workers was their most pressing concern. Owners of construction, manufacturing and service businesses told the agency they were having serious trouble finding skilled help last month. “While more small businesses are looking to hire, many owners still can’t find skilled workers,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in the group’s release.
Restrictions on immigration no doubt explain some of the recruitment problems. the National Association of Home Builders was mentioned immigrants accounted for one-third of skilled construction workers in 2024. In addition, recruitment experts have pointed growing mismatch between the skills of workers and those needed by employers.
But experts said Forbes they see small business owners being more cautious about hiring – and therefore more selective – due to broader uncertainty about the business climate.
“Small businesses are becoming very, very careful about their cash retention and their hiring,” says Bob Coleman, author of the Coleman Report, a trade publication for small business bankers. “That’s a consistent theme, it’s been a consistent theme for the last two years.”
Coleman says small businesses that have survived the global COVID-19 pandemic have emerged smarter than before, and as a result are simply being careful with their bankrolls.
“Small businesses, when they hire someone, they want that person to fill an immediate need. And given the choice to hire, let it go unfilled, or hire an in-between gap, they’re just going to wait for the right person, because it’s so expensive to hire people these days,” Coleman adds. “A friend pointed this out to me and said, ‘Bob, I just hired someone and I’m paying her more than I’m paying my house payment. This is a significant investment and you want to get it right.”
Jay Kaplan, co-founder of Tuross Group, which provides financial operations for small businesses, says Forbes also hears a lot of nervousness in the small business community these days. Caplan says it’s natural for many to cut back on hiring to preserve cash, as they’ve watched inflation roll in over the past year. “What I’m seeing is owners asking, can they do more with their existing team that they have before committing to another salary?” says Caplan. “They’re really, really into it.”
Caplan adds that there is “definitely a shortage” of skilled workers to fill the open positions, but that with an unskilled workforce, the hiring shortage is more about small businesses trying to be fiscally conservative given the economic pressures the Trump administration is putting on them.
“Not to get political, but I think a lot of people are really nervous,” Caplan says, adding that his company has many clients in the distribution space. “When you’re looking at your fuel costs going up 20%, 30%, and you’re carrying a lot of stuff around, it starts to hit home.”
However, according to the NFIB, survey respondents looking to hire immediately pointed to the difficulty of finding skilled workers. A construction company owner in South Carolina told NFIB, “One of the biggest challenges is recruiting and retaining skilled, experienced plumbing technicians. Because we’re outside of a major metropolitan area, attracting qualified candidates to a smaller city can be more difficult.” The owner of a sanitation company in Wisconsin commented, “It’s very hard to find unskilled labor! […] Other businesses would like to contract us (they can’t find people, so we have more work). However, we have to turn down the job because we can’t hire anyone! Yes, it’s “just” a cleaning job – but we pay competitive rates, offer paid vacations, paid holidays, insurance, retirement plan, etc. – and we still can’t find anyone!’
Whether due to shortages in skilled labor or general cautiousness about the economy, small business hiring has basically held steady over the past four months, with the NFIB employment index reading 100.2, down from 100.3 in May, both reflecting a weaker labor market. The most recent quarter’s index was consistently below the calendar year 2025 average of 101.2, though above the historical average of 100.
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