![]() ![]() ![]() To attract workers, other governments have dropped college degree requirements and spiced up drab job descriptions. ![]() That comes a year after Biddeford adopted a four-day work week with paid lunch periods to try to make jobs more appealing, said City Manager Jim Bennett. This month, Biddeford also launched a $2,000 bonus for city employees who refer others who get jobs. The city is now offering fully certified dispatchers $41 an hour to help plug the gaps on a part-time basis - $10 an hour more than comparable new workers normally would earn. In Biddeford, Maine, a 15-person roster of 911 dispatchers dipped to just eight employees in July as people quit a “pressure cooker job” for less stress or better pay elsewhere, Police Chief JoAnne Fisk said. About one-quarter of 911 call center positions are vacant - “a huge factor” in the longer wait times to answer calls, said Tamara Bazzle, assistant manager of the communications unit for the Kansas City Police Department. Public safety concerns also have arisen in Kansas City, where a country music fan attacked before a concert last month waited four minutes for a 911 call to be answered and an hour for an ambulance to arrive. If prison staffing is too low, “it can get dangerous” for both inmates and guards, Narvaez said. ![]() The prison also is proposing to provide free child care to correctional officers willing to work nights. The vacancy rate for entry level corrections officers now is declining, and the average number of applications for all state positions is up 18% since the start of last year.Īt the Fulton prison, where staff shortages have led to a standard 52-hour work week, newly hired employees can earn around $60,000 annually - an amount roughly equal to the state’s median household income. Mike Parson signed an emergency spending bill with an additional 8.7% raise, plus an extra $2 an hour for people working evening and night shifts at prisons, mental health facilities and other institutions. Missouri gave state workers a 7.5% pay raise in 2022. In the first week of July, the department received 318 correctional officer applications - nearly double the weekly norm, said department Public Affairs Director Joan Heath.Īlmost 1 in 4 positions - more than 2,500 jobs - were empty in the Missouri Department of Corrections late last year, which was twice the pre-pandemic vacancy rate in 2019. The Georgia Department of Corrections used an ad agency to bolster recruitment and held an average of 125 job fairs a month. This year, all state employees and teachers got at least a $2,000 raise, with corrections officers getting $4,000 and state troopers $6,000. Thousands of workers left the Department of Corrections, pushing its vacancy rate to around 50%. In Georgia, state employee turnover hit a high of 25% in 2022. But governments by nature are slower to act, requiring pay raises to go through a legislative process that can take months to complete - and then can take months more to kick in. Many businesses, from restaurants to hospitals, responded nimbly with higher wages and incentives to attract employees. Workforce shortages worsened across all sorts of jobs due to a wave of retirements and resignations that began during the pandemic. Lingering vacancies “eventually affects service to the public or response times to needs,” she added. “A lot of the jobs we’re talking about are hard jobs,” said Leslie Scott Parker, executive director of the National Association of State Personnel Executives. ![]()
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