“Finding qualified employees remains the biggest challenge for small businesses and is slowing economic growth. “Small business owners are seeing a growth in sales but are stunted by not having enough workers,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. The Optimism Index has increased 4.8 points over the past three months since January but a record 44% of owners reported job openings they could not be filled. (May 12, 2021) – The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index rose to 99.8 in April, an increase of 1.6 points from March. Small business job openings slowing economic growth Government data on Wednesday is expected to show consumer prices increased strongly in April, but services costs outside housing are forecast to have risen moderately.Small Business Optimism Up In April But Job Openings Remain At Record Highs The share of small business owners reporting that inflation was their single most important problem dipped one point to 23%, and was 14 points lower than last July's peak, which was the highest reading since the fourth quarter of 1979.Ībout 33% of owners reported raising average selling prices, down 4 points. The government reported last week that there were 1.6 job openings for every unemployed person in March. Thirty-seven percent of the owners had vacancies for skilled workers, up three points from March. The vacancies were concentrated in construction and transportation. Though the Fed has signaled it may pause its fastest monetary policy tightening campaign since the 1980s, the economy has yet to feel the full effects of the cumulative 500 basis points of hikes in the policy rate since March 2022.įorty-five percent of owners reported job openings that they could not fill, up 2 points from March. central bank's aggressive interest rate hikes rather than the cliff-like decline in credit some feared after the March collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. "While owners are becoming more pessimistic, April's report should help allay concerns that credit is becoming completely unaccessible for small businesses," said Charlie Dougherty, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in New York.Ī Fed survey of bank loan officers published on Monday showed credit conditions for businesses and households continued tightening in the first months of the year, but this appeared to be the result of the U.S. A net 6% reported their last loan was harder to get than in previous attempts, down three points, while 4% reported financing was their top business problem, up one point from March. Fifty-nine percent said they were not interested in a loan, unchanged from March. Thirty percent reported all their credit needs were met, up a point from the prior month. A net negative 19% expected higher inflation-adjusted sales, down four points from March. The share of owners expecting better business conditions over the next six months fell two points to a net negative 49%. "As we've argued before, though, measures of sentiment are often a poor guide of what is likely to happen in the economy because it tells us more about how business owners are feeling, rather than what they are doing." economist at Oxford Economics in New York. "The decline is broadly in line with the weakness in consumer sentiment seen over the past year," said Michael Pearce, lead U.S. While the survey hinted at an economic slowdown, economists cautioned against reading too much into the drop in sentiment.
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