California’s economy is booming and the unemployment rate is low (4.3% as of March 2019), making the job market highly competitive.
As many small business owners have told us, it’s an employee market right now. This means that in order to attract and retain the best talent, businesses must offer attractive compensation and benefits. While talent may seem freely available, businesses must carefully consider the labor market when designing their compensation packages and workplace cultures.
“The market for skilled labor is competitive,” Yoh said. “Now it’s definitely a market for employees. However, it has also become easy to find talented people around the world to work with.”
A competitive job market means that it takes more time and effort to fill open vacancies with qualified candidates. Some entrepreneurs see a competitive job market as an opportunity to improve their internal processes and position themselves favorably in the future.
“Given the continued growth of the California economy, combined with low unemployment, it has become a labor market where businesses have to compete fiercely for talent,” Sole said. “Over the last couple of years my time to fill a position has increased, but we are still able to find the qualified talent we need and it has helped me evaluate our compensation and incentive plans to ensure I have a great place to work.”
Sole added that it can be difficult to compete with big companies in the area, but the constant flow of new people entering the state has helped ease the burden of a competitive job market.