My mom and dad have owned a staffing firm for almost 20 years. They're some of the few small-business owners who benefit from extremely low unemployment rates (when businesses have trouble filling open jobs, they're more likely to use a recruiting service). It sounds like the owner of this McDonald's franchise in Helena, Mont., could use my mom and dad's help. According to the AP story, John Francis had such trouble finding workers that he outsourced the drive-thru window to a telemarketing service in Texas.
The NFIB Research Foundation's monthly Small-Business Economic Trends survey (which has tracked small-business hiring plans since its inception in 1986) found that 23 percent of business owners had unfilled jobs in August.
