95% Of CFOs Consider It Harder To Hire New Workers, Even As Unemployment Benefits Drop

As the U.S. economy continues along a steady road to recovery, executives are worried that they will not be able to hire enough workers to make the most of it, even as unemployment benefits have ended in some states.

These concerns were captured in a new CNBC Global CFO Council survey that was conducted Aug. 13-26 among 39 members who are worth a combined $5 trillion. In this group of U.S. CFOs, 95% considered it harder than before to hire workers, regardless of how much more in compensation or benefits a company can offer new hires.

Among all CFOs, 84% shared this view. Earlier this year, the same survey found that only 18% of CFOs surveyed said the same thing.

The labor shortage predates the pandemic, but was dramatically exasperated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Like other segments of the economy during the recovery, imbalances in supply and demand have been slow to return to normal. New data show that hiring has gone up, but this may have been among workers who were eager to enter the job market.

A sense of greater bargaining power could also be contributing to workers opting to be more discerning in choosing which firms to join. With companies looking to offer incentives like higher salaries to fill the gaps, workers are enjoying a bargaining position that they have not had for some time.

Other reports, like the Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Survey, show that those saying jobs are “plentiful” remains near 55%, while those saying jobs are hard to get is roughly 12%. According to CNBC, these figures approach a record high and are more than double the number who felt jobs were plentiful at the end of the first quarter of 2021.

The sense of worker empowerment in the face of a hungry job market arrives at a time when the unemployment benefits implemented by the federal government during the pandemic are phasing out. Some states led by Republican governors have cut these benefits early, arguing that continuing them would provide people a reason not to work. However, data show that this argument is waning because hiring has remained on par in states that maintained benefits as in ones that cut them sooner.

Concerns about the Delta variant of COVID-19 do not appear to be dissuading either workers from seeking a job or employers from offering one. The CNBC survey found that 68% of CFOs say the Delta variant of COVID-19 has only changed their outlook “a little” while 16% of all CFOs surveyed say that it’s changed their outlook “a lot.”