By Emma Wu
The COVID pandemic has had a multitude of impacts on everyone’s lives, especially small business owners. Small businesses are arguably among one of the most negatively impacted industries by the COVID pandemic. Due to significantly decreased numbers of people going to these stores, many have closed, unable to keep up with rent, costs, and other expenditures. With restrictions finally going away, more and more people have been able to get out and support these businesses. However, this doesn’t mean that small businesses are out of the woods yet.
One of the main difficulties still being faced by small businesses is a staffing shortage, or lack of workers. It isn’t that there is less of a demand for workers among small businesses; quite to the contrary, this year has seen the largest demands for new workers, and this demand does not appear to be reducing anytime soon.
There appears to be two main reasons for this slowed hiring rate in small businesses. The first reason would be the lack of applicants for such careers. Due to the COVID pandemic, changes in the workplace have led to many vacancies the companies and businesses are unable to fill. With about 11.24 million job openings in July, the number of vacancies outnumbers the number of available workers by a nearly two-to-one margin. The second reason for a stalled hiring rate would be the inflation of wages. Average earnings of $30.71 per hour during August of this year were increased by $1.51 from last year. This increase of wages by nearly 5.18% puts significant pressure on small businesses, some of which cannot afford to keep up with wage inflation. As such, the added difficulty of finding workers and paying higher wages curbs the hiring rates for small businesses.
