The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) told employers in October that the national unemployment rate dropped to 3.5% — but that’s just a number. Across the country, talent professionals in every industry face the tightest labor market since December 1969. What does a 3.5% unemployment rate mean to them? What does that look like inside American businesses? And what are they doing to cope with the challenges it brings?

To begin to answer these questions, HR Dive spoke with five talent professionals, each from a different business, in a different industry, of a different size, in a different part of the country. Read on to discover what the labor shortage means to each of them, and how they’re dealing with it.

The following responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.