IDAHO, USA — The biggest concern for the majority of Idaho's businesses is finding and retaining employees, according to the Idaho Employer Business Climate Survey recently released by the Idaho Department of Labor.
This is the first time the Idaho Department of Labor has conducted the survey. The department receives data from federal partners, including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, however, the numbers don't come in as frequently as they'd like. The goal with the survey was to get a snapshot of concerns, business needs and expectations.
The department surveyed 2,360 employers for the business climate survey. The majority of respondents cited either high labor turnover, or cost and supply of workers, as their top business concern.
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Matthew Paskash is the Idaho Department of Labor's regional labor economist for Southeastern Idaho. He said the department began talking about Idaho's pressing need for workers around 2018.
"That really stuck out to us as the need in this current economy for workers, as we're seeing a lot of folks retire due to the aging of the baby boomer generation," Paskash said. "We're seeing a lot of churn, both within sectors and across sectors, as workers basically vote with their feet and shop for the best employer matches they can find."
A majority of employers cited job switching as the top reason for labor turnover.
"Most of the churn we're seeing is decisions made by employees to break this relationship of sorts with their employer," Paskash said. "Things have cooled down a bit since this survey went out earlier this year. But still, we would probably qualify this labor market as still very much a seller's market."
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With a tight labor market tilted in the worker's favor, Paskash said a lot of employers are now having to invest more into their own workforce to promote from within, and use other creative ways to find and retain workers.
"In this labor market especially, you have to be willing to, I guess, not hold back and be able to take not necessarily the best candidate, but the first good candidate they can find when going through applicants for a job," Paskash said. "As well as being being upfront with what they are looking for in an employee, and what they're willing to offer for the talent that they need."
The survey didn't just cover top business concerns. It also found that 11% of Idaho workers are in some type of remote or hybrid work format.
Additionally, some of the most in-demand skills that employers are looking for are soft skills - things like teamwork, time management and managerial skills. Demand for soft skills are only expected to increase over the next five years.
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