February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Andrew Bushe
DUBLIN — Economic storm clouds have affected the confidence among the country’s small firms that expect to create almost a third fewer jobs this year than they did last year.
Director of the Small Firm’s Association Pat Delaney said the 900 members that had responded to their annual survey showed the mindset was on consolidation rather than expansion.
The survey revealed that they expected the number of new jobs will drop to under 46,000 from over 64,000 last year, a fall of almost 30 percent.
"Expansion plans are being put on hold and 41 percent of respondents were citing unrealistic salary expectations as the key reason for not creating new jobs.
"There has been so much pressure on wages it is not economically viable for them going forward to create jobs."
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Delaney said the survey did not take full account of the potential U.S. economic downtown and took no account at all of foot-and-mouth disease.
"It is really a statement of confidence," Delaney said. "If we lose jobs, and we have lost significant numbers of jobs in the first quarter, we have no guarantee we will be able to create jobs to replace them."
He said he was "fearful" that the figures in the survey were conservative as the economy was facing a very important test over the coming months.
The number of firms seeking to recruit staff has declined from 71 percent last year to 62 percent now and the percentage of firms experiencing expansion problems because of a shortage of labor has fallen from 71 percent in to just 38 percent.