68% of employers can’t find qualified workers

It’s one of today’s most vexing economic puzzles: Why can’t employers find workers to fill their positions when approximately 7.5 million Americans are unemployed, and millions more are working part-time because they can’t find a full-time job or have given up looking for work altogether?

According to a new CareerBuilder survey, nearly 60% of U.S. employers have job openings that stay vacant for 12 weeks or longer. The average cost HR managers say they incur for having extended job vacancies is more than $800,000 annually.

According to the survey, 68% of employers that said they were adding full-time staff in the first quarter of 2017 had open positions for which they could not find qualified candidates.

More than half (55%) of employers surveyed said they have seen a negative impact on their business due to extended job vacancies. The primary effects:

Productivity loss: 45%
Higher turnover: 40%
Lower morale: 39%
Lower quality: 37%
Inability to grow: 29%
Revenue loss: 26%

Source: CareerBuilder/Harris Poll survey, April 2017