Hiring Stalled by Rising Costs of HealthCare

That's not a valid work email account. Please enter your work email (e.g. you@yourcompany.com)
Please enter your work email
(e.g. you@yourcompany.com)

newsA recent survey from Adecco Staffing US,  polling senior executives on obstacles to new hiring found that 35 percent of respondents are delaying hiring due to the higher costs of healthcare resulting from the healthcare reform law. However, 35 percent also said that health care costs were a primary concern even prior to the recession, suggesting such costs have been a challenge for a long time. In second place, salary and compensation costs are a common challenge to motivating additional hiring.

“While there certainly have been political and economic changes since the recession started in 2007, it’s interesting to see that senior executives face the same challenges they did five years ago,” says Joyce Russell, president of Adecco Staffing US. “Business leaders continuing to find competitive health care and salary packages as their two biggest challenges calls attention to the impact that the economy and changing regulations can have for an organization. As regulations change, businesses are often put in situations where they’re faced with figuring out how to adjust their systems and processes to comply with policies instead of completely focusing on ongoing business challenges and opportunities.”

In order to create new jobs, 49 percent of respondents said the government should offer business incentives, 44 percent said investments in infrastructure improvements would do the trick, and 43 percent were proponents of bureaucratic reform. While 47 percent of respondents report their profits are predicted to increase in 2013, just 18 percent expect profits to fall. Small business executives are most likely to predict increased profits next year with 48 percent of small business respondents reporting this, compared with 41 percent for medium and large businesses.

By Joshua Bjerke