Low unemployment is good news for the economy, but it can make recruiting more challenging — particularly for staffing firms in areas with especially low unemployment.

“We feel that every day because it’s been a struggle these days,” Bhuwan Sharma, an owner of the Burlington Employment Agency, said of finding workers. “Everyone seems to be working somewhere.”

Sharma’s agency is located in Burlington, Vermont, which tied with Ames, Iowa, as the metropolitan area with the lowest unemployment rate among all metro areas in the US at 1.5% in May, not seasonally adjusted.

“On the other side, the economy is doing well,” Sharma said. “Companies are doing very well. Their business is doing well, which means they need more people.”

If you can find 100 people, his agency can put them all to work, he said.

A focus at the Burlington Employment Agency is New Americans — people who have newly immigrated to the US. However, the agency works with all candidates. The company places workers in positions such as light production, food processing, warehousing and housekeeping.

One difficulty is that fewer New Americans are coming to Burlington. On the other hand, the tight job market has more client companies interested in New Americans when in the past they may have been concerned about the language barrier. Sharma says more and more companies are reaching out to his firm.

Another impact of the tight labor market is the need for creativity and an increase in focus on soft skills.

“We have to get more creative, but a piece of that is also educating our clients around the talent that is available,” said Jennifer Granner, managing director at Experis IT, a division of ManpowerGroup Inc. That can mean focusing on soft skills such as learnability, being agile and the ability to collaborate — and the ability to train people up in the technical skills.

Granner is based in Minneapolis and specializes in IT staffing; however, her office also covers the Ames, Iowa, area. Minneapolis itself posted the eighth-lowest jobless rate among large US metro areas at 2.7%. It tied with the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah, metropolitan areas.

Soft skills are especially important given the pace of change.

“That’s where the creativity comes in, it is around truly understanding the soft skills, the candidate and what they bring to the table,” she said.

People may also come from different industries but still possesses transferrable skills; this is especially true in an area like Iowa, Granner said. These people may be military candidates who are returning to civilian life, stay-at-home moms returning to the workforce and others. Workers may be able to pivot into a STEM career with the skills that they have.

It’s also good to look at which people can adapt to the new skills that will be required in five years in addition to those who possess the skills needed today, she said.

The pace of change in technology isn’t slowing, and it impacts other industries, such as manufacturing, which seeing the increasing impact of technology through automation and other developments.