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Hiring essentially stalled last month, according to the latest data from the state Labor Department. Even more concerning, revisions to the September job numbers wiped out what initially was reported to be a modest uptick in hiring.

A Buffalo Niagara Partnership survey this fall found that finding and retaining qualified talent was their biggest concern, trumping rising labor costs, which ranked as the second-biggest challenge.

To ease the staffing crunch, the region needs to step up efforts to attract talented workers from elsewhere and also do more to improve the skills of the workers who are already here, either by training to upgrade their current abilities or to teach them the skills for an entirely new career, said Dottie Gallagher, the Partnership’s president.