Key Takeaways
- Labor is the top problem again: 26% of small business owners named the quality or availability of labor as their single biggest problem in September, up from 18% a year ago, according to NFIB.
- Most owners who are hiring can't find people: 51% of owners were hiring or trying to, and 87% of them found few or no qualified applicants.
- Dental practices are short on hygienists: Only 60% of dentists have enough hygienists on staff, and 91% of those recruiting one say it's very or extremely challenging.
- When you can't add hours, the mix of work matters more: The fastest way to grow is to fill more of your team's time with the jobs that pay best.
- Your website decides which jobs come in: We'll cover 6 ways to set up your website so it brings in more high-value work and takes less of your team's time.
If you've had a job posted for months and still can't fill it, you're not alone.
On October 13, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) released its monthly survey of small business owners. For the third month in a row, the problem owners named most often was finding good workers. And few owners are planning to grow their way out of it. Only 7% said now is a good time to expand.
So if you can't add people, how do you grow? For most service businesses, the answer is to make each hour your team works bring in more. That means more of the jobs that pay well, and less time spent on the phone and on paperwork.
In this post, we'll look at what the new survey says, why the mix of work matters when you're short-staffed, and six ways to point your website at the jobs you want.
What does the September NFIB survey say?
NFIB surveys a sample of its small business members every month. The September survey got 411 responses. Here are the main numbers:
| Measure | September 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Small Business Optimism Index | 97.9 | Down 0.8 points, just under the 52-year average of 98.0 |
| Owners who say labor quality or availability is their top problem | 26% | Up 3 points, and up from 18% a year ago |
| Owners hiring or trying to hire | 51% | Down 5 points |
| Owners with job openings they can't fill | 32% | Down 3 points, still 8 points above the historical average |
| Owners who say it's a good time to expand | 7% | Down 5 points |
| Owners raising prices (net) | 31% | Unchanged, and well above the historical average of 14% |
Source [1]
A "net" number is the share of owners who said yes minus the share who said the opposite. So a net 31% raising prices means 31 points more owners raised prices than cut them.
Labor has been the top problem since July. The 26% reading is more than double the survey's historical average of 12%, and close to its all-time high of 29%.
How hard is it to hire right now?
Very hard, for most owners. Of the owners who were hiring or trying to hire in September, 87% said they found few or no qualified applicants. And 20% of all the owners in the survey said they got no qualified applicants at all for the jobs they were trying to fill.[1]
The trades feel this more than most. A new report from the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades found that 24% of skilled trades workers are 55 or older, while just 11% are under 25. For HVAC mechanics, 19% are 55 or older. In other words, more workers are aging out of the trades than coming in.[2]
Dental practices have the same problem with hygienists. In April, the American Dental Association's Health Policy Institute reported that only 60% of dentists have enough dental hygienists on staff. Among dentists who were recruiting a hygienist, 91% said it was very or extremely challenging.[3]
The same report points to a squeeze on practice margins. Prices for equipment, supplies, and technology are rising faster than what insurance pays for dental care. That makes it hard for practices to raise wages enough to hire.
Why does the mix of work matter when you can't hire?
When you can't add people, your team has a fixed number of hours each week. So your revenue depends on what fills those hours.
Think about a dental practice with a full hygiene schedule. A routine cleaning takes most of an hour of a hygienist's time, and the fee is often set by the patient's insurance plan. A crown or a root canal usually brings in far more per patient, and most of that work is done by the dentist, not the hygienist. So if you can't hire another hygienist, a few more crown and root canal patients each month can add more revenue than another day of cleanings.
The trades work the same way. A heating company might get two calls on the same morning, one for a seasonal tune-up and one for a heat pump replacement. Both need a tech, but the replacement brings in many times the revenue.
This part is our read, and your numbers will be different. Some smaller jobs are worth keeping because they lead to bigger ones. A cleaning is often how a dentist finds the tooth that needs a crown, and a tune-up is often how an HVAC company gets the replacement two years later. So you don't need to drop that work. You just want more of your open hours to go to the jobs that pay best.
How does your website decide which jobs you get?
Your website has a lot to do with the mix of work that comes in. Customers usually search for the service they need, not for a type of business. Someone with a cracked tooth searches for "emergency dentist" or "dental crown near me." A homeowner with an old furnace searches for "heat pump installation" and their town.
If your website lists every service on one page, it has very little to say about any one job. That makes it harder for the page to show up for those searches, and harder for a customer to tell whether you do that work well. It matters most for bigger jobs, because people read more before they spend more.
AI assistants look for the same details. Ahrefs studied 66.6 million ChatGPT answers and the web searches ChatGPT ran to write them. Between August and September, the share of those searches that included the word "price" rose from 6.0% to 8.9%, and the share that included "official" rose from 10.1% to 13.1%.[4]
The study covered all kinds of questions, not just local ones. But Ahrefs' advice applies to any business: if ChatGPT goes looking for your prices and details, those facts need to be on your own site, in plain text, on a page it can find.
So the services your website explains well are the ones customers are most likely to find you for.
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6 ways to point your website at higher-value work
1. Find out which jobs pay the most per hour
Start with your own numbers. Look at your last 50 jobs or appointments, and divide what each one brought in by the hours your team spent on it, including drive time. Then sort the list from highest to lowest.
If you run a dental practice, your practice management software can usually show production by procedure and by provider. If you run a contracting business, your invoices and timesheets are enough.
Pro tip: Mark the jobs that tend to lead to bigger ones, like a cleaning that turns into a crown or a repair that turns into a replacement. Those are worth keeping even if they rank low on the list.
2. Give each high-value service its own page
Once you know which services pay best, give each one its own page. A dental practice might have separate pages for crowns, root canals, implants, and clear aligners. A plumbing company might have one page for tankless water heater installs and another for repiping.
A good service page answers the questions a customer has before they call:
- What the service is and who it's for, in plain words
- How long it takes and what each visit looks like
- What affects the cost, and whether you offer financing or payment plans
- Photos of real work, and reviews that mention that service
- A form or booking link just for that service
If writing all of those pages is the hard part, an AI local business website can draft each one from your services and reviews for you to check.
3. Put those services first on your home page
Most customers start on your home page and click the first thing that looks like their problem. So the services you list first are the ones most people see.
What to do: List your highest-value services at the top of your home page and your menu, with a short line and a button for each. Keep cleanings, tune-ups, and small repairs on the site, but move them lower.
If you run a practice, our page on AI marketing for dental practices shows the treatment pages a dental website should have.
4. Show what it costs and how people can pay
Bigger jobs come with bigger bills, and cost is often what stops people from booking. In 2025, 12.9% of Americans skipped dental care they needed because of the cost, according to the ADA Health Policy Institute. That's more than twice the rate for medical care, which was 5%.[5]
Homeowners are the same. In a Housecall Pro survey of more than 1,100 homeowners, 62% said they're more likely to go ahead with a project when financing is offered. And 72% said they would pay more to get an emergency fixed within 24 hours.[6]
What to do: On each high-value service page, show a starting price or a typical range if you can. Dental fees depend on the patient, so most practices explain what affects the cost instead, along with the insurance plans and payment options they accept. And if you can take same-day or emergency work, say so on the page and price it to match.
Pro tip: Show the monthly payment next to the total. For most people, a monthly amount is easier to say yes to than one big number.
5. Offer a plan customers can join from your website
A plan is a way to sell work ahead of time. In home services, that's usually a maintenance agreement, like two tune-ups a year with priority scheduling. Many dental practices offer an in-house membership plan for patients without insurance, which covers cleanings and exams for a yearly or monthly fee.
Plans can help a short-staffed business in two ways. You can schedule the visits for your slower weeks, and members tend to come back to you when they need bigger work. This part is our read, so check it against your own customers.
What to do: Give the plan its own page, with what's included, the price, and a way to sign up or ask for a call.
6. Let customers book or request a quote without a phone call
Every phone call takes someone away from a job or a patient. So the more a customer can do on your website, the less time your team spends on the phone.
For routine work, that can be online booking. For bigger jobs, use a quote form that asks the right questions, like the address, what's wrong, and a photo. A plumber can often tell from a photo whether a water heater needs a repair or a replacement. And a dental front desk can see which new patients are asking about crowns or implants before they call them back.
Website chat helps too. It can answer common questions, like whether you take a certain insurance plan or work in a certain town, and take down the customer's details when they're ready.
What does this mean for your business?
The NFIB numbers say most small business owners can't hire their way to growth right now. But you can change what fills your team's hours, and your website is one of the easiest places to start.
Start with one service. Pick the job that pays best per hour, give it a page with clear costs and payment options, and put it at the top of your home page. Then check in a month whether more of those requests are coming in.
If you'd like help with this, that's what we built Pantora to do. We make local business marketing software that builds your website and keeps it up to date. You can add a page for crowns, move it to the top of your menu, or add your financing options by typing what you want in a sentence. The change is ready for you to review in minutes. And if you connect QuickBooks, Pantora shows which pages brought in the jobs that paid, so you know which services to push next.