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Small biz gives up on jobs
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April 18, 2000: 6:46 p.m. ET
Positions are hard to fill, survey says, while expectations for hiring decline
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Small employers have become so frustrated with the tight job market that they are starting to give up on finding qualified applicants to fill vacancies, a business group's economist said Tuesday.
Twenty-three percent of firms in a March survey reported said that finding qualified labor was their biggest concern, while 33 percent reported having job openings that were hard to fill, according to a survey sponsored by the National Federation of Independent Business. Both statistics were records.
At the same time, however, hiring plans fell to 14 percent, eight points below a record set in December, according to the NFIB survey.
 The combination of factors -- a record number of hard-to-fill jobs and reduced hiring expectations -- led William C. Dunkelberg, the federation's chief economist, to conclude that some business owners have given up hope of finding workers to staff their offices, factories and sales departments.
"Of course, there are problems and then there are problems," Dunkelberg said. "There are problems you don't mind having, like growing so quickly that you can't staff the growth."
Other measures in the survey indicated continued strength in the economy. Overall, the survey's Index of Small Business Optimism rose to 101.2 in March from 100.8 in February, while sales and earnings also improved.
Still, in looking at the outlook, survey respondents disagreed by a 17-point margin that the economy would improve in the next three months, "a dreary figure but no surprise," Dunkelberg wrote in his commentary on the results. "How can the economy beat 7.3 percent real growth?" Gross domestic product rose at a 7.3 percent rate in the fourth quarter.
This survey was completed before the marketplace volatility that rocked stocks during April, but Dunkelberg voiced doubt that Wall Street's turmoil would make much difference on Main Street.
In October 1987, the time of the last great market crash, respondents to the NFIB survey held essentially the same view of the economic outlook after stocks' plunge as they had before, he said. 
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