According to data from Alignable, the number of small biz employers laying off workers doubled in December compared to the previous month. Meanwhile, 41% of those businesses have a hard time paying rent.
Just as the holiday season got underway, Alignable found that an average of 74% of small biz employers surveyed “have instituted hiring freezes until at least” Q2 of next year. That was up a whopping 12 percentage points from November, it added.
Nearly three out of four small business employers (74%) say they can’t afford to hire anyone now and don’t expect to hire again until at least Q2 2023. That finding is up 12 percentage points over last month’s number: 62%.
There are also categories to this data. When looking at the change in the share of US small business owners who say they are laying off workers, here’s the list. The percentages are from November 2022 to December 2022.
Increasing it’s
- Gyms, from 2% to 19%
- Construction, from 12% to 18%
- Transportation, from 4% to 17%
- Real Estate, 8% to 17%
- Finance, from 9% to 15%
- Retail, from 1% to 14%
- Restaurants, from 6% to 11%
- Manufacturing, from 1% to 4%
Decreasing,
- Agriculture, from 27% to 17%
- Travel, from 13% to 1%
Overall, the increase is from 8% to 15%
Some 87% of employers participating in this poll have fewer than 20 employees, and 77% have ten or less.
That said, let’s note that our own space, technologists, isn’t shrinking. According to a Tuesday report by tech career marketplace Dice, the number of postings for technologists grew 25% year-over-year during the first ten months of 2022. The report analyzed tech job postings from January through October. The report said that tech job listings spiked early in the year to over 450,000 and then dipped below 400,000 in August and September. After two months of decline, postings rebounded with a 3% increase in October.
Why do we care?
I would think that specific data on the hiring practices of SMBs would be evident as to why we care. That moves my bar for analysis a little higher, so here it is. Technology companies will be more out of sync with their customers, considering how aggressive growth targets will be stymied by customers who are not growing. This is particularly hard for those who charge based on user or device numbers.
I don’t see a pattern in the two exceptions, Agriculture and Travel. I’d guess travel’s growth is temporary, so I won’t try to read too much into that.