What it's like to be a small business in an anemic job market

Jim Piper runs a sheet metal fabrication company, Kelair Dampers, outside Chicago.

He’s got about 30 full-time employees. “Hiring is not an issue that I’m deeply worried about right now, unfortunately,” he said.

He’s more worried about bringing in enough work. “It’s been a tough start to the year. The fundamentals aren’t great. Costs are up, demand down.”

Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum are pushing up the prices he pays suppliers. Meanwhile, customers aren’t ordering as much of the air-flow-control equipment the company makes, because regulation of factory emissions is being rolled back.

Over the last year, as a few employees have voluntarily left the company, “we’re simply not backfilling those positions,” he said.

It’s a rough job market out there. We won't get the January jobs report until next Wednesday, but the other data that’s rolling in isn’t too pretty.

Job openings fell sharply in December, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey report. Challenger, Gray & Christmas’ job cut report showed a huge surge in layoff announcements in January, and the lowest monthly hiring on record. And ADP reported this week that private-sector job creation was anemic in January.

All of this is playing out at smaller and mid-sized businesses across the country — including at Piper’s factory in Chicago.

Over in Olympia, Washington, Chris Knudson owns three restaurants — a brewhouse and two Italian restaurants.

Business right now is “not awesome,” he said. “It’s always a little bit slow in January, especially on the brewery side.”

Blame Dry January for that. But this January’s been slower than last. With inflation biting into consumers’ paychecks, he sees diners going out less, ordering less extravagantly.

“We have to sort of keep the staff low because costs keep rising and volume’s not there. We’re probably between 45 and 50 employees right now, and if we were firing on all cylinders, probably we’d be closer to 60 to 65,” he said.

In Kansas City, Missouri, Emily Bordner is busy with her growing retail and wholesale jewelry business, EB and Co., which has four brick-and-mortar stores and 16 employees.

“We came off of a year of going viral in 2024,” she said. Sales boomed after Taylor Swift was spotted wearing one of Bordner’s rings while cheering Travis Kelce in the stands.

Last year, Bordner expanded, but tariffs also cut into her margins, and consumers pulled back.

“When we opened up two more stores, we had to staff them, but we’re definitely doing it as bare-bones and as minimally as possible,” she said.

These business owners said it’s not as hard to hang on to workers as it was a few years ago.

For Jim Piper’s metal fabrication shop, gone are the days of scrambling to find skilled-trade workers.

“When we have banner years, and I need to hire four, five, six welders, that’s when it becomes a challenge. That’s not an issue today,” he said. “I wish that was an issue again.”

But for that, he’d need business to pick up.