Why companies aren’t hiring more workers

They're scared — and you're working so hard they don't have to

By Allison Linn Senior writer

msnbc.com

updated 8/4/2011 5:50:48 PM ET

With more than 14 million people seeking work in this country, economists would really like to be seeing employers adding hundreds of thousands of jobs to their payrolls each month.

Instead, we’ve had to settle for just a small fraction of that.

The economy added a paltry 18,000 jobs in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government will report employment figures for July on Friday, but already many are fretting that job growth will again be anemic.