Cd'A tops small business study

Every city claims to be small-business friendly, but Coeur d’Alene now has data to prove it.

According to a report released by the online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter, Coeur d’Alene job seekers are the most likely in the nation to apply to small businesses.

The study found that small businesses in Coeur d’Alene received 70 percent more applications than large companies last year. Small businesses were defined as having 20 or fewer employees, while large companies were those that employ 500 or more.

Steve Wilson, president and CEO of the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce, said he wasn’t surprised by the findings.

“We’re a small community made up mostly of small businesses,” Wilson said, “so that makes sense.”

In fact, according to 2017 data from Emsi, an economic development agency in Moscow, only six companies in Kootenai County employ more than 500 people. That accounts for just 0.1 percent of local businesses.

Those six corporations have a total of 8,333 employees, or 14 percent of the workforce in the county, according to regional economist Sam Wolkenhauer of the Idaho Department of Labor.

On the flipside, 5,017 businesses — 87 percent of employers in the county — have fewer than 20 employees.

According to Wolkenhauer, 12,982 people work for these small businesses, comprising 22 percent of the working population in Kootenai County.

In other words, small businesses in the Lake City are bound to attract more applications than the handful of large companies.

Overall, ZipRecruiter found that applications to small companies outnumbered those to larger corporations in only 50 cities — out of 352 — meaning Coeur d’Alene bucked the overwhelming national trend.

Mitch Downey, a labor economist for ZipRecruiter and author of the report, said that workers in cities like Coeur d’Alene simply prefer working for small businesses.

“It’s not desperation,” Downey said. “It’s because people in these cities like to work at small businesses.”

Downey added that an increased interest in smaller companies did not correlate with the unemployment rate, a lack of openings at large businesses, or the rate of small business failure.

“Workers have more choices,” he said. “They’re not being pushed toward small businesses unwillingly.”

Since the report only used data from ZipRecruiter, Downey cautioned that its findings were not necessarily representative of the broader population.

However, he said he believes the study offers a fairly accurate snapshot of the American job market.

“Given our scale,” Downey said, “we feel that our data is at the least directionally indicative of the labor market trends in the U.S.”

The study analyzed applications for nearly 6 million jobs posted on the ZipRecruiter website over the course of 2017.

Downey said small businesses could attract even more applications by offering a strong corporate culture and enticing job seekers with benefits.

“The key for small companies is to find solutions that will grant employees satisfaction,” Downey said, “but that is sensitive to the company’s wallet and overall business plan.”