Small Businesses Feeling Buoyant About Conditions, But Still Worried About Lack of Workers, Says Survey

Nearly two-thirds of small business owners in a new survey expressed positive feelings about the state of their own businesses as the calendar heads into 2024.

The survey, undertaken by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, also found that a strong 67% said they feel comfortable with their current cash flow, a result unchanged from late 2022.

Measuring attitudes through the Chamber’s Small Business Index reveals a 61.3 average on small business conditions in general. This figure is very close to the 62.1 score seen in the final quarter of 2022, but a significant improvement from the 39.5 recorded during the Covid 19 spring of 2020.

Despite the more general upbeat attitude, small business owners say they remain challenged by a problem that just won’t seem to go away: a lack of qualified workers.

A strong 54% of respondents said it remains hard to find a candidate with necessary experience, while 53% agreed that there is in general a worker shortage in the area in which they do business.

“Nearly half of small businesses report searching for, recruiting, or interviewing new talent in 2023,” noted Thaddeus Swanek, with the Chamber’s strategic communications department, in a narrative.

That figure is a “significant increase from mid-2021,” continues Swanek. Altogether, 45% of respondents said they had been actively looking for new talent this year, indicating that the challenge remains current and vexing, compared with 36% who said the same thing in the fall of 2021.

“Not surprisingly, in this atmosphere of increased competition for workers, employers are having to pull out all the stops to find and retain talent,” continued Swanek. That means offering everything from flexible work schedules, increased salaries, and even hybrid or remote work alternatives.

On a touchy issue that reaches into politics, some 54% of respondents to the small business survey said they think the U.S. government should issue more skilled worker visas annually, allowing those businesses to at least have access to a worker pool that is not completely domestic.

​By Garry Boulard

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