The June CBIZ Small Business Employment Index, a barometer for hiring trends among companies with 300 or fewer employees, increased by only 0.67 percent through the month, after posting an increase of 0.22 percent in May.

Of the companies that were surveyed, the data showed that 22 percent reported a decrease in employee headcount, while 29 percent increased staffing. Forty-nine percent of the companies involved in the survey maintained their number of employees.

The slow pickup in the job market may be in part accounted for by the fact that the small business sector typically requires longer-term economic growth and likely will not drastically change over a seasonal period of time, as previously expected.

“June’s CBIZ Small Business Employment Index reveals another month of little to no growth in the small business job market,” CBIZ Payroll Services business unit president Philip Noftsinger said in a statement. “We expected to see stronger pickup due to summer seasonal hires; to see a smaller number is probably less than good news.”

The CBIZ report came out last week, the same week that ADP and Intuit reported some increases in small business hiring, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an increase in the unemployment rate to 9.2 percent.