Some businesses delay hiring, wary of downturn
Adam Clark’s Fairborn business was robust at the end of 2018 and then froze in early January. By midmonth he decided to postpone hiring.
Clark’s company, Tangible Solutions, manufactures replacements for knees and other joints, and sales can be subject to consumers’ comfort with spending on medical care and with doctors’ caution when new products like Clark’s are available.
Clark also began curtailing spending, and educating his staff about being frugal. “We also present the financials of the business
to all our employees so they are aware and can be cognizant when needing to make a purchase on behalf of the company,” says Clark, whose company is located on Yellow Springs Fairborn Road.
Small business owners who are uneasy as they see signs of a weakening econ- omy have cut back on hiring in recent months and found ways to get work done with- out adding employees. The latest evidence of a hiring slowdown came last week, when payroll provider ADP said its small business cus- tomers created just 6,000 jobs in March.
February’s tally of 19,000 new jobs was also weak and down sharply from January’s 98,000; ADP’s small busi- ness numbers also fluctuated throughout 2018. The report, as well as the most recent jobs report from the Labor Department, clearly shows that small business hiring has lagged behind job creation at larger com- panies. Small business owners, especially those who learned hard lessons from the Great Recession about overstaffing, are playing it safe. While a Capital One survey also released last week showed that 29% of 500 small business owners planned to hire in the next six months, that was down from 33% in a survey six months earlier. Of the owners who don’t plan to hire, nearly 30% said the economy is making them too nervous to spend more on staffing. The Capital One survey was in line with other surveys taken during the first quarter. The economy is widely expected to slow this year, starting with the recently ended first quarter. Econo- mists surveyed by financial information provider FactSet estimate that gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.6% from January through March, down from 2.9% in all of 2018. TruePublic’s last four hires were part-timers. CEO Kaben Clauson had planned on taking on full-time staffers, but partly because of the economy decided against the added risk. “We co u ld hire those people full time now - we have the money to do so - but it would give us only six months of a cash cush- ion,” says Kaben, whose Chi- cago-based company con- ducts online surveys. “We’d feel more comfortable with a year’s cushion.” Clauson’s concern is linked to the hesitancy he sees in investors who start hunker- ing down because of stock market volatility or signs of economic weakness. “My company is raising another $2 million and we’re looking for investors,” Kaben says. “Who’s knows what happens with the economy going forward?” Before the recession, the philosophy at many compa- nies was to hire in anticipa- tion of higher revenue. Now, the approach is to put off hiring until rising revenue justifies taking on the added expense and risk. Many owners like Martin hire indepen- dent contractors, or free- lancers, if there’s more work than their regular employ- ees can handle. “They have a much finer gauge on how to accom- plish what they need to without layering in a lot of expense,” says Steve Spinelli, the incoming president of Babson College and an entrepreneur himself. Owners have also adopted technology that helps them get their work done, so there is less pressure on their companies to hire, Spinelli says. “You have a healthier small business community, a more nimble small business com- munity and one that’s more forward looking,” Spinelli says. After Greg Henson’s tech- nology services company was forced to lay off half its staff during the Great Recession, he restructured the business so approximately 50% of The Henson Group’s workers are freelancers. He has the flexibility of calling them in for projects as needed, and doesn’t have fears of another mass layoff. Henson is also concerned about the economy, and has contracted with another company to handle some of his sales work. “We have frozen hiring until we know what’s happening,” he says. Some owners aren’t as worried but have about other the reasons economy, to be concerned about their finances and are therefore cautious about hiring. For example, their overhead is going up and they don’t want to add to those increasing costs - expenses that can make them more vulnerable to the vagaries of the economy.
The rising minimum wage has Sean Pour holding off hiring 10 new staffers for his company, SellMax, which has more than 30 workers earning the $12 minimum that a San Diego city ordinance requires.
The minimum, which rose 50 cents on Jan. 1, will rise each year along with inflation.
The minimum-wage staffers at SellMax work in the car buying company’s call center. Pour supplements their pay with performance bonuses, but worries that rising wages will limit his ability to pay the extra money.
“Quite frankly, this scares us and we are afraid we won’t be able to keep the new hires that we employ,” Pour says. So SellMax, which already uses automation to answer some calls, may need to increase its dependence on technology if it can’t afford to hire.