Is your organization planning on adding staff over the next three months or so? Be warned — a bunch of your competitors are, too. And that’ll probably mean a hike in your payroll costs.  
That’s the overall message in recent research from CareerBuilder, which says that 32% of the people who make hiring decisions at businesses of all sizes said they intend to hire additional full-time permanent employees in the next few months.
The biggest businesses were most likely to be in expansion mode. Fully 38% of businesses with more than 500 employees expect to hire in the current quarter, compared to 32% in the same period a year ago.
This time around, however, small- and mid-sized businesses are expected to join the talent competition. Many of those companies had remained cautious about their prospects for business growth in the recent past.
Now, 24% of small businesses say they plan to expand full-time headcount by the end of June, compared to 18% in the same period a year ago.
The pick-up in small business hiring has been showing up gradually over the past few months, Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, said in a press release.
“Small businesses have been playing a larger part in the solid stretch of job growth the U.S. has experienced over several months,” he said. “When you pair that with the fact that hiring has increased in a variety of industries and regional areas, it bodes well for workers seeking new and better-paying employment prospects.”

The price is going up

Recent growth may bode well for applicants’ prospects, but there’s likely to be a price to pay for employers, according to the CareerBuilder study.
There are signs that employers are feeling the pressure to raise salaries to attract the best candidates. Forty-three percent of employers said that they have job vacancies that have been open for 12 weeks or longer.
A majority of those surveyed said they plan to reward employees with raises during the present quarter. About 24% said they’ll increase salaries by at least 5%. Another 44% anticipate increasing salaries by 4% or less. In the hottest field, information technology, about 37% of employers expect to raise salaries.
IT is one of four industries whose employers are most likely to be in new-hiring mode. More than 40% of bosses in the transportation and financial services industries said they would be hiring, as did 32% of mid-sized health care companies.
Temporary or contract employment also is showing an upswing. Thirty-seven percent of employers plan to hire temporary or contract workers in the second quarter, up from 33% a year ago. And 31% plan to offer a permanent job to some contract or temporary staffers in the second quarter, up from 26% last year.
The survey was conducted for CareerBuilder by Harris Poll, and included a representative sample of more than 2,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals across various industries.