A Monmouth County based plumber says the labor shortage is preventing him from expanding his business.   

Gary Miles owns Independence Plumbing and Heating, which is currently a small business. His company keeps a handful of his employees very busy.  

As much as he wants to expand, he says there aren’t enough prospective employees available, and other small business owners are in the same position as him.  

“Everybody is in the same boat. There's just no pool of people out there to pull from,” says Miles. "If I end up finding somebody else that's worth taking on I might expand, but right now there's nobody out there. Nobody who wants to work, nobody who's willing to learn."  

Manisha Subramanian is the owner of PrideStaff, a staffing agency in Edison. She says numerous business owners are in Miles’ position.  

"This does not surprise me. We have seen this issue for the past maybe 10 years or so. High schools are really pushing kids to go to college," says Subramanian.  

Subramanian says in her 20 years of business she has never experienced this type of shortage before.

“A lot of our clients are coming to us saying, ‘help us’ because they used to go post on a job board and they would get lots of applicants. Now we have to go get the candidates. So now our clients come to us saying, ‘we need help,’” says Subramanian.

She added, although high schools are starting to refocus on the trades, it will be quite some time until the workforce is replenished.