Survey shows few businesses plan to hire holiday help

[October 17, 2022]  By Kevin Bessler | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – A new study reveals small business owners are downshifting their hiring needs as recessionary trends continue to take a toll on their recoveries.

A study by the small business network Alignable shows only 7% of small businesses plan to hire more workers for the holidays. That is compared to 36% last year.

Head of research Chuck Casto said a majority of small businesses in Illinois don’t plan on hiring more people in the last quarter of the year.

“Fifty-seven percent of those polled in Illinois said they’re not hiring at all for the rest of the year,” said Casto. “Four percent said they are actually laying off people because of their projections for Q4.”

Retailers usually hire temporary workers for the holidays, but many said they were not hiring anyone for the rest of the year citing labor costs, the difficulty of recruiting the right staff, and other expenses going up.

“Fifteen percent of the retailers are looking for holiday help, but that is down from 32 percent last year, so it's less than half,” said Casto.

Forty-three percent of retailers also said they have scaled back their inventory purchases for the holiday season, compared to last year.

The restaurant industry has struggled to retain workers since the beginning of the pandemic. This time last year, 56% of restaurant owners indicated they were going to hire more staff for the holidays. Now a year later, that figure is only 17%, down 39% in 12 months.

Sixty-seven percent of small businesses said they’re in a hiring freeze mode, with a majority being in the furniture, finance and beauty businesses.

Federal Reserve officials said they will be able to get surging inflation under control without triggering a recession, but almost every chief executive in the country is bracing for an economic downturn in the next 12 to 18 months, according to a recent survey from The Conference Board.

Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said the country is already in a recession.

“The first two quarters of real GDP negative, to us, means we’re in a recession,” Wood told Yahoo Finance Live. “We believe this recession will be sustained.”

Kevin Bessler reports on statewide issues in Illinois for the Center Square. He has over 30 years of experience in radio news reporting throughout the Midwest.