--- url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-the-seat-you-cannot-fill/' title: The Smallest Employers Have 1.74 Jobs Standing Open for Every One They Fill. In 2017 It Was 1.02. author: name: Samantha Lankford url: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/author/sam/' date: '2026-10-01T10:30:00-04:00' modified: '2026-10-01T10:30:00-04:00' type: post summary: 'Private establishments with 1-9 employees hold 1,186,000 open jobs and fill 683,000 a month — 1.74 standing open per hire made. In 2017 it was 1.02.' categories: - Blog Post image: 'https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-the-seat-you-cannot-fill-hero.webp' published: true --- # The Smallest Employers Have 1.74 Jobs Standing Open for Every One They Fill. In 2017 It Was 1.02. ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png)Founder Data Report ![The Smallest Employers Have 1.74 Jobs Standing Open for Every One They Fill. In 2017 It Was 1.02.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/founder-the-seat-you-cannot-fill-hero.webp) Founder Data Report # The Smallest Employers Have 1.74 Jobs Standing Open for Every One They Fill. In 2017 It Was 1.02. By Michael Dermer • Updated October 1, 2026 Join us Fridays at 12 PM ET to ask TLE CEO Michael Dermer your questions live. [Join the CEO Call →](https://shorturl.at/364XX) The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes job openings and hires by the size of the workplace. Sorted that way, the backlog at the smallest employers has gone from 1.02 open jobs per hire in 2017 to 1.74 — and at that size the unfilled work does not get reassigned to anyone. It is added to the leadership burden the owner already carries. Quick Answer Across the twelve months through July 2026, private establishments with one to nine employees held **1,186,000 job openings** on the average month-end and filled **683,000 jobs** a month. That is 1.74 standing open for every one filled. Every one of those open jobs is work somebody is still expected to do, and at this size the somebody is usually the owner. For the private sector as a whole it is 1.30. In 2017 the smallest establishments were at 1.02, below the 1.09 private-sector figure and below every size band above them. Only 10-to-49 employees, at 0.98, had a shorter queue. Today the only band with a longer one is five thousand employees and up. What the numbers say - 1.74 jobs standing open per job filled at one to nine employees, twelve months to July 2026. The private-sector figure is 1.30. - In 2017 the same establishments were at 1.02, below the 1.09 private-sector figure. The backlog has grown by 0.72 since, and the private sector’s by 0.21. - Their openings rate, 5.10%, is the highest of any band below a thousand employees. Their hires rate, 3.12%, is the lowest of any band below 250. - It is not a size gradient. The shortest of the six published bands sits at 50-249 employees, at 1.10, with longer ones on both sides of it. - These are establishment size classes and they are not seasonally adjusted, which is why every figure here is a twelve-month average rather than a month. ## An unfilled seat at a four-person business has nowhere to go An unfilled role at a large employer is a resourcing decision. At a four-person business it is your evening. A big company has a management layer to spread the work across; when a small employer cannot fill a role, the work does not go anywhere. It comes back to the owner, on top of everything the owner is already carrying, and it stays there until the seat is filled. The hard part is not the vacancy. It is the decision you make again every week — absorb it yourself or lower the bar — made without enough information, with responsibility for everyone still on the payroll riding on it, with the consequences landing on you either way, and with nobody to hand the decision to. The numbers below say there is more of that work waiting at the smallest employers, relative to how fast they fill jobs, than at any other size under five thousand people. The Data Jobs standing open and jobs filled, by size of workplace, 12 months to July 2026 Total private Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings4.50% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.62% 1-9 employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings5.10% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.12% 10-49 employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings4.48% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.90% 50-249 employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings4.16% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.94% 250-999 employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings4.15% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.46% 1,000-4,999 employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings5.20% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs3.19% 5,000 or more employees Jobs standing open, % of the band’s jobs plus openings4.53% Jobs filled in the month, % of the band’s jobs1.79% Both bars in a row are drawn on the same 0 to 6% scale and the printed percentages are the true ones. Slate is openings and orange is hires; the colours name which measure a bar is, not which number is better. The two rates are NOT built on the same base — the Bureau measures openings against employment plus openings and hires against employment — so the gap between the bars is a comparison, not a subtraction. Do not read one bar minus the other as a number. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), series by establishment size class, total private, retrieved from the BLS public data API on September 27, 2026; latest reference month July 2026. Size-class series are published for total private only and are NOT seasonally adjusted, so every figure shown is a 12-month average covering August 2025 through July 2026 rather than any single month. JOLTS counts ESTABLISHMENTS — a single physical location — not firms, so a nine-person branch of a national chain sits in the 1-9 band alongside a nine-person independent business. Job openings are counted on the last business day of the month; hires accumulate across it, so a ratio of the two is a backlog measure and not a rate. Job openings rate and hires rate, total private, by establishment size class. > 1,186,000 open. 683,000 filled a month. Somebody is doing that work tonight. ## It is not a size gradient. It is a shape with two ends. The tempting reading is that the smaller you are, the bigger the pile of unfilled work — and that is not what the file says. The backlog falls as you grow, to 1.10 at 50-249 employees, and then climbs again: 1.25 at 250 to 999, 1.72 at a thousand to five thousand, 2.63 at five thousand and up. The two ends get there differently. At the smallest end the backlog is long because the openings rate is high, 5.10% against 4.50% for the private sector. At the largest end it is long because hiring is rare — a hires rate of 1.79%, less than half the private-sector 3.62%. A four-person shop and a five-thousand-person employer arrive at the same-looking number from opposite directions, and only one of them has the owner covering the gap. The Data Jobs standing open per job filled, by size of workplace, 12 months to July 2026 1-9 employees1,186,000 standing open, 683,000filled a month1.7410-49 employees1,933,000 standing open,1,609,000 filled a month1.2050-249 employees1,799,000 standing open,1,634,000 filled a month1.10250-999 employees778,000 standing open, 621,000filled a month1.251,000-4,999 employees458,000 standing open, 266,000filled a month1.725,000 or more employees205,000 standing open, 78,000filled a month2.63 Bars are drawn on a 0 to 3 axis and the printed figure is the true one. Orange marks a band above the private-sector figure of 1.30; slate marks one below it. Each figure is the band’s average month-end openings divided by its average monthly hires, and the sub-line gives both counts so the division can be checked. Openings are a count at a moment and hires are a count over a month, so this is a measure of backlog, not a rate and not a duration. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), series by establishment size class, total private, retrieved from the BLS public data API on September 27, 2026; latest reference month July 2026. Size-class series are published for total private only and are NOT seasonally adjusted, so every figure shown is a 12-month average covering August 2025 through July 2026 rather than any single month. JOLTS counts ESTABLISHMENTS — a single physical location — not firms, so a nine-person branch of a national chain sits in the 1-9 band alongside a nine-person independent business. Job openings are counted on the last business day of the month; hires accumulate across it, so a ratio of the two is a backlog measure and not a rate. Job openings and hires levels, total private, by establishment size class. ## In 2017 the smallest employers had a shorter queue than average This is the part that has changed. In 2017 establishments with one to nine employees carried 1.02 open jobs for every one they filled, against 1.09 for the private sector — a shorter queue than average, not a longer one, and shorter than every band above them. The only year in the series below one is 2020, when hiring briefly outran posting. It crossed above the private-sector figure in 2019, fell back in 2020, and has been above it in every year since 2021. The peak was 1.96 in 2022; 2025 came in at 1.58, and the twelve months to July 2026 at 1.74. The private sector’s own backlog rose over the same stretch, from 1.09 in 2017 to 1.30 in the twelve months to July 2026 — but the smallest employers’ rose by 0.72 against its 0.21. Whatever normalised after 2022, this did not. The Data Jobs standing open per job filled at establishments with 1-9 employees, 2017-2025 - 1.021.151.220.961.591.961.901.781.581.01.21.41.61.82.0201720182019202020212022202320242025 Each point is a calendar-year average of twelve monthly figures, so 2026 is not on the chart — only seven months of it exist. The y axis runs 0.9 to 2.0 and is labelled, so the size of the move can be read off it. A value of 1.0 would mean one job standing open at month-end for every job filled during the month. The private-sector line, not drawn here, runs from 1.09 in 2017 to 1.28 in 2025. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), series by establishment size class, total private, retrieved from the BLS public data API on September 27, 2026; latest reference month July 2026. Size-class series are published for total private only and are NOT seasonally adjusted, so every figure shown is a 12-month average covering August 2025 through July 2026 rather than any single month. JOLTS counts ESTABLISHMENTS — a single physical location — not firms, so a nine-person branch of a national chain sits in the 1-9 band alongside a nine-person independent business. Job openings are counted on the last business day of the month; hires accumulate across it, so a ratio of the two is a backlog measure and not a rate. Job openings and hires levels, establishments with 1-9 employees, annual averages of monthly data. Three honest limits. These are establishments, not firms: a nine-person branch of a chain is counted in the same band as a nine-person independent, and the chain’s branch has a head office doing its hiring. A vacancy in this survey is a job the employer is actively recruiting for, so an owner who has given up advertising a role and absorbed it permanently has stopped being counted — which means the real backlog of work is larger than the measured one, not smaller. And a backlog is not a duration: this says how much is waiting relative to how fast it moves, not how long any particular seat sits empty. The Data Where the numbers land 1.74 jobs standing open per job filled at 1-9 employees, 12 months to July 2026 1.02 the same figure in 2017, when it was below the private-sector average 5.10% openings rate — the highest of any band below 1,000 employees 3.12% hires rate — the lowest of any band below 250 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), series by establishment size class, total private, retrieved from the BLS public data API on September 27, 2026; latest reference month July 2026. Size-class series are published for total private only and are NOT seasonally adjusted, so every figure shown is a 12-month average covering August 2025 through July 2026 rather than any single month. JOLTS counts ESTABLISHMENTS — a single physical location — not firms, so a nine-person branch of a national chain sits in the 1-9 band alongside a nine-person independent business. Job openings are counted on the last business day of the month; hires accumulate across it, so a ratio of the two is a backlog measure and not a rate. ## Frequently Asked Questions Do small businesses have more unfilled jobs than large ones? Relative to their size, yes. In the twelve months to July 2026, private establishments with one to nine employees had a job openings rate of 5.10% — the highest of any size band below a thousand employees, against 4.50% for the private sector as a whole. They also filled jobs at the lowest rate of any band below 250, 3.12%. How many jobs are standing open at the smallest employers? An average of 1,186,000 at any month-end across the twelve months to July 2026, against 683,000 hires a month — 1.74 open for every one filled. For the private sector the same figures are 6,360,000 and 4,891,000, a ratio of 1.30. Has it always been this way? No, and that is the finding. In 2017 establishments with one to nine employees carried 1.02 open jobs per hire, which was below the 1.09 private-sector figure — a shorter queue than average. It crossed above in 2019, fell below during the 2020 hiring rebound, and has been above in every year since 2021, peaking at 1.96 in 2022. Does the backlog just get worse the smaller you are? No. It falls as you grow to 1.10 at 50-249 employees and then rises again at every larger band, reaching 2.63 at five thousand and up. The two ends get there for different reasons: small employers post a lot relative to their size, very large ones hire rarely. It is a shape with two ends, not a gradient. What are the limits of this data? JOLTS size classes are establishments — single physical locations — not firms, so a small branch of a large company is counted with genuinely small businesses. The size-class series are published for total private only and are not seasonally adjusted, so every figure quoted here is a twelve-month average. And a vacancy is counted only while the employer is actively recruiting, so work an owner has quietly absorbed for good drops out of the measurement. Keep reading [Small Employers Have the Lowest Quit Rate in the Economy. The Trouble Starts at Your Tenth Hire.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-turnover-by-company-size/) - [83.7% of Four-Person Firms Expect No Change in Headcount. Only 8.7% Expect to Hire.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-flat-forecast/) - [14.0% of Four-Person Businesses Call Themselves Excellent Today. Asked About Six Months From Now, 9.1% Do.](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/founder-nobody-forecasts-excellent/) Part of the entrepreneurial struggle: [Leadership Burden](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/entrepreneur-struggle/leadership/) ![The Lonely Entrepreneur](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/TLE_Logo_mobile-490W-26-26.png) Published by **The Lonely Entrepreneur** — the community and coaching platform for entrepreneurs who are building alone. [lonelyentrepreneur.com](https://lonelyentrepreneur.com/) This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional financial or legal advice.