The recurring story of recent months continued into April. While owners of small businesses are ramping up employment, they’re not hiring as many people as they’d like to hire because they simply can’t find the workers. Most of the 1,554 participants in the survey reported hiring or trying to hire in April, but a full 88% of those trying to add employees reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were aiming to fill.Twenty-two percent of owners cited the difficulty of finding qualified workers as their single most important business problem, “exceeding the percentage citing taxes or regulations. Shortages of qualified workers are clearly holding back economic growth,” says Mr. Dunkelberg.Firms in construction and manufacturing are having a particularly hard time finding potential employees. But, just like businesses in other industries, they are not giving up the search. A seasonally adjusted net 16% plan to create new jobs, down four points from March but “historically strong,” adds the NFIB chief economist. Labor markets for both skilled and unskilled workers remain tight.