Hiring increases at Las Vegas companies with fewer than 100 employees

Business got brighter for Lighting & Electronic Design in 2011.

The Las Vegas company makes, imports and sells lighting systems for businesses and high-end homes, and orders picked up enough last year to support new hires. Lighting & Electronic Design added two workers, one in production and one in sales, for a 12.5 percent jump in its staff of 16.

Like many businesses, the company spent the recession as tightly staffed as possible but couldn't get by on its existing work force any longer, President Janie Lynn said.

"We were down to a skeleton crew," Lynn said. "I would like to have hired more, but I don't like to give people days off and tell them there's no work for them. It's better for us to really max out until we have to add another person."

A new study shows Lynn has plenty of company on the local recruiting circuit.

Hiring among Las Vegas companies with fewer than 100 employees outstripped employment gains in the West and the nation in 2011, with the average local staff count growing 5.3 percent in the year, to 5.98 workers. That's according to the SurePayroll Small Business Scorecard, a nationwide analysis of paycheck data.

That compares with a 7.7 percent drop in staff sizes across the West, and a 3.2 percent decline nationwide.

Las Vegas also outperformed most of the report's 35 benchmark cities. Its growth rate ranked No. 3, behind Orlando (up 7.1 percent) and San Antonio (up 8.3 percent). Just half of the benchmark markets posted staff expansion in the year.

Michael Alter, president and CEO of Illinois-based SurePayroll, said 2011's gain came from several factors.

For starters, the city's economy fell further than average in the downturn, so the hiring bounce-back looks larger.

A jump in the hiring of independent contractors also boosted staff counts. Contractors made up an outsized share of the Las Vegas work force in 2011, at about 5 percent of the jobs base. That compares with less than 2 percent in Minneapolis, for example.

That jump in independent labor is a positive sign for the economy, Alter said.

"The first step of a recovery is an increase in contractors. Business owners may think demand is coming back, but they don't want to commit to full-time hires just yet. So you're going to see more contractors come into the work force," he said. "When businesses are comfortable that the revenues they're seeing are sustainable, you'll see some of those contractors flip over to permanent hires."

There's a flip-side to the growth, though: Adding full-time workers means less overtime for existing employees, and contractors often work fewer hours than permanent employees, Alter said. Those factors combined to push down the average 2011 small-business paycheck by 3.6 percent, to just more than $30,000.

Still, average pay has increased from month to month since September, Alter noted. He said he expects local small-business wages to rise more in 2012.

Alter also said hiring should continue advancing through 2012, with small businesses nationwide growing as well.

The SurePayroll Small Business Owner Optimism Survey found that 20 percent of small-business owners across the country said they expect to seek funding in 2012, mostly to invest in marketing, technology and facility upgrades or expansion. Half plan to hire in 2012, while 56 percent said they intend to raise wages for some or all workers.

Bob Linden, owner of Las Vegas document destroyer Shred-It, has already enlisted an employment agency to rustle up a temporary worker. He wants to shift some clerical work away from his inside sales staffers to allow more time to land new business. Linden hopes to boost revenue by low double-digit percentages. If that happens, he'll need more employees to run the company's routes.

Linden said he's more optimistic about 2012 than he's been about any year in the past five, and he senses other business operators feel the same way.

"Tourism is picking up, and the spin-off from that is very positive," Linden said. "We're seeing increasing calls, with a slight uptick in companies expanding, and even some new companies coming to town. Nationally, things are picking up. It's only upticks here and there, but it's positive. It's the first time we've seen positive as opposed to, 'We continue to bounce along the bottom.' "

Lynn also feels good about 2012. If just half of its promised sales come through, Lighting & Electronic Design will double sales in the year, she said.

As for more hiring, well, maybe.

"I tend to be on the cautious side, so we have to be absolutely confident that our existing people are going to be kept busy before we hire anyone else," Lynn said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Robison at jrobison@review
journal.com or 702-380-4512.