NYC's Municipal Staffing Shortage

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior politics reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian today. City jobs are vacant and city services are suffering. This workforce so essential to keeping the city going is down nearly 20,000 people since the start of 2020. That's the assessment from the 5BORO Institute, a new think tank founded by allies of Mayor Eric Adams. It says it's focused on "advancing creative, equitable, and fiscally responsible solutions to New York City's most challenging problems." 5BORO has some recommendations for how the city can mitigate this staffing crisis and strengthen areas of retention, recruitment, and modernization.

These recommendations are echoed by those from the New York City comptroller's office, which has released its own report with a title that gets right to the point, Understaffed, Underserved. We'll get into what it takes to close these gaps and the ripple effects of the municipal worker shortage with Grace Rauh, executive director of the think tank 5BORO Institute, and as you probably will recall, a former longtime political reporter for NY1 and guest on this show. Hey, Grace, welcome back to WNYC. Always great to talk to you.

Grace Rauh: Thank you, Brigid. So happy to be here and get to talk to you about this issue.

Brigid Bergin: Can you start by just telling us a little bit about what 5BORO is and what its goals are as an organization?

Grace Rauh: Sure. We are a new New York City think tank. We launched last year. Our founders are Tom Allon, the founder and publisher of City & State, another media organization that covers government very closely as you know, as well as Richard Ravitch, who is a legendary figure in New York civic circles, former Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York. The two of them came together because they felt like as New York was coming out of the pandemic, we were at a very pivotal moment as a city, facing a lot of significant challenges, but also, in moments of challenge and crisis, there's opportunity to reimagine how our city functions, what it looks like, what the future holds.

We really feel like this is an all hands on deck moment for New York, and so we've pulled together through our board and through our network of partnerships and conversations with leaders across the city, a group of people who are very invested in the success of New York and its bright future. To ensure that New York has a bright future, we are trying to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing the city with public policy ideas.

This is where we started, on the staffing crisis in city government, because I have to say, when I joined in September, I spent the fall meeting with as many people as I could inside and outside of government and a constant refrain that I heard over and over again was people who said an organization like 5BORO can have the best policy ideas in the world, it doesn't matter right now because the staffing crisis in city government is so acute that there are so many agencies struggling to get through their current to do list, forget about adding to it or innovating, and that until the staffing challenges are addressed, we're going to have a lot of trouble enacting new and innovative public policies.

Brigid Bergin: With that very helpful background, let's start digging in on this staffing issue question and 5BORO's assessment of them. Talk a little bit more about what the impact of this shortage is, and help us put some of these vacancy numbers in context. How incomplete is the city's workforce at this point?

Grace Rauh: Currently there are 23,000 vacant positions in city government. There could be actually many more, but the mayor and his team have cut about 4,000 of them as a budget saving measure. Right now, the budget does have money set aside to fill these 23,000 vacancies. That's about five times as many open jobs in city government as existed at the start of the pandemic, just to give you some context here.

I should note that New York City is not alone in finding itself in a situation where it doesn't have enough workers to do the jobs that are needed. We can look to many other industries right now. Hospitality, restaurants, we know were struggling to hire the staff that they need, hospitals as well. In many parts of the country, schools are really suffering because of a teacher shortage. COVID and the pandemic stirred up a lot of changes within the workforce environment in general, but we obviously are focused on how this is playing out in the city.

To go back to your question, we can really draw a direct line in many cases between specific staffing shortages and services being delivered to New Yorkers. I think a particularly stark example is at the Department of Social Services, which has about a 20% vacancy rate. Normally, that agency processes food stamp applications within a month. That's what they're technically required to do, was somebody applies for food assistance, and within a month, they'll get that food assistance if they're eligible for it. In 2021, 92% of applications were processed within a month. December 2022, we were down to 46%. Less than half of applications for food assistance were processed on time.

Then we had the acting commissioner of that agency, Molly Park, was testifying before the City Council this week, and she shared some updated figures. It's now gone down to 36% of these applications are being processed. That means that New Yorkers who are in need of food, which is a basic necessity for families, obviously, in some cases are waiting months and months to get it even though they are eligible. The acting commissioner directly attributed those delays to the staffing shortages in her agency.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Listeners, we want you to be part of this conversation about the city workers shortage. If you've recently left a city job, why did you leave? If you're currently a city worker, how have staff departures and unfilled job vacancies affected your job or agency? Are you a New Yorker who interacts with a city agency as Grace just mentioned, someone looking for city services, has your experience changed because of this worker shortage? Help us report this story. The number is 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Grace, before I even did that call out, we had our board fill up with some folks who want to talk about some of the city's health insurance issues. Let's go to Marvin in Brooklyn. Marvin, welcome to WNYC.

Marvin: All right, thank you, and thank you, Brigid, for filling in for Brian. We hope that he's well. Yes, clearly if the city wants to attract the best people to work, one of the things that has been an attraction is its health care provisions because it can't compete with the private sector on salaries, but it's now forced to a Medicare Advantage Program, which we know is detrimental to [unintelligible 00:08:21] It will be administered by Aetna, which had insured slave owners. The Medicare Advantage Program providers have been found guilty of robbing billions of dollars from the government. It's inconceivable to want to rebuild the workforce, and at the same time, undercut one of the strengths and attractions for working for the city.

Brigid Bergin: Marvin, thanks so much for your call. Grace, this is an ongoing conversation in the city about the city's retirement benefits. Does the 5BORO Institute get into that in its recommendations as part of perhaps the retention?

Grace Rauh: We don't. Marvin raises a great point. That's obviously a huge issue and on the minds of many city employees and retirees. It was not, however, something that people pointed to as an acute reason driving the staffing shortage in government. Some of the issues that came up in our research and conversations were the lack of hybrid flexibility within government. That was a key sticking point that we heard from many people who had chosen to leave for the private sector or other roles.

As you know, the mayor and this administration has been very clear that all city workers across all agencies need to work in-person five days a week. There's recently been some movement toward allowing potentially some hybrid flexibility. The city is planning to start a pilot program in June, because I think it's clear to them as well that the world of work has changed, and that hybrid flexibility for workers for whom it makes sense, obviously a teacher, a police officer, that's not going to work, but there are a lot of people in city government who could do their job from home. One of the recommendations in our report is that city workers be allowed to have some flexibility one to two days a week so that there's a balanced option.

Brigid Bergin: Grace, you have talked to people who've said that the vacancies are a real issue. Have you heard some of the reasons why people are leaving their jobs? We talked about the remote work option, but what are some of the other reasons? I think we could probably imagine them off the top of our heads, related to pay, but are there other issues in terms of the ability to do the work? Why is it so hard to fill some of these critical positions?

Grace Rauh: There are two things happening, I believe, at once. One set of reasons that seemed to be driving the departures has to do with what one former city employee referred to as the doom spiral. This idea that as people left for jobs with higher pay, or remote work, or hybrid flexibility outside of government, new people weren't coming in to take over their position, and so then the people who had remained in government were being asked to do more, the workload was increasing, their stress, their level of burnout. Then some of them decided to leave. Again, new people weren't coming in, and so the folks remaining were doing more with less and really feeling the strain, which led to more people.

It really was having a negative snowball effect. At the same time, the city has not made it particularly easy for people who want to go in to actually get jobs in government. I spoke with senior leaders at various agencies who talked about finally convincing a high performer, somebody who they went out and sought to join their team to say yes to a city government job, then they waited, in some cases, six to nine months to actually get official approval from the city to hire that person and bring them on board. The timelines have been incredibly lengthy. There's been a lot of bureaucratic hurdles that candidates for jobs have needed to clear.

I should note that in the wake of our report, just this week, the city's head of the Budget Office sent a memo to agency heads saying that the Budget Office at City Hall, which had been really a roadblock in terms of approving these hires, that they would be responding to hiring requests within 10 business days, so committing to a much faster timeline, which is really positive. They also said that for very difficult-to-recruit roles, where there was high attrition, they would give some flexibility on the pay, and they'd be willing to raise pay for those jobs by 15%.

We think that the city is recognizing, A, that this is a problem, and B, that there are things that they need to do on their end, to make it easier to bring people on board, because what we don't want to have happen is people who want to go into government and who have a great track record of success earlier in their career, these are the folks that we should want to be part of our agencies and on the frontlines of delivering services to New Yorkers. Our report does call for some changes on the back end to modernize government and make it easier for those folks to join.

Brigid Bergin: If you're just joining us, this is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC newsroom, filling in for Brian, who's just taking a couple of days off. My guest is Grace Rauh, Executive Director of the 5BORO Institute, a recently formed New York City-focused think tank. Grace, we have some callers who can speak to the issue that you're just talking about. These are people who are interested in working for the city. Let's talk to Wesley in Newark, New Jersey. Wesley, thanks for joining us.

Wesley: Hi, good morning. I'm a former attorney with a lot of experience as the chief operating officer for larger non-profit organizations. I've applied to multiple positions with the city and have not gotten a single callback. Now, as the chief operating officer and HR director, my question is how much of this is because the systems that the city is using to scan resumes simply isn't picking up on people who have diverse backgrounds or who don't have those exact keywords that your systems are looking for?

Brigid Bergin: That's a great question, Wesley. Grace, do you know, and does that get into some of the modernization part of what the 5BORO Institute is recommending?

Grace Rauh: Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry that that's been your experience. That shouldn't be your experience, especially given your background and the fact that you're an attorney. I don't know if the jobs that you're applying for are legal roles, but that is an area that the city is desperately in need of lawyers right now. As you know, Brigid, they've had to partner and create a legal fellows program where we have private law firms in the city that are dispatching junior associates, maybe they're not all junior, I don't want to say that, the associates from the firms to come work pro bono for the city to help with the workload because they don't have enough attorneys.

Certainly, these systems need to be much more flexible, need to be able to capture the full nature of someone's background, and not be as, to Wesley's point, if you don't check all of the very specific boxes, that means that you're not going to go forward to the next level. We think there is a lot of work to be done on the online application process. We also think the city needs to look to the private sector and become much more proactive in terms of going out and recruiting people to come into these jobs rather than passively put them up on a complicated internal website that's really difficult to navigate and not very user friendly, and instead be much more proactive in terms of going out and seeking the workers and talent that they need.

Brigid Bergin: Wesley, thank you so much for your call. Let's try Alexis in Riverdale, another story of someone who is interested in working for the city. Alexis, welcome to WNYC.

Alexis: Hi, good morning. Thank you for having me. I have stage fright, I apologize. I was a part of the Test and Trace Corps that was developed by Mayor de Blasio when he hired about 3,000 public health workers to be on the forefront of the COVID-19 crisis. We went door to door in pre-vaccine New York, tracking down people with COVID and making sure they stayed alive. I then worked in the Department of Education Situation Room to keep the public school system open.

My colleagues and I felt very betrayed when at the end of April, we were all let go after having worked really hard and laid our lives on the line, and been battle tested. I don't think the issue is just a failure to attract workers. It's also poor calls on the part of the Adams administration. Rather than retaining 3,000 highly trained public health workers and transferring us into different roles in the city, he just dismissed us. I feel like that was very poor judgment, and he could be hiring fewer roles than he currently is right now if he had kept us.

In addition, I've been trying to get new roles with the city, and have found that when I've been offered roles by the Department of Health and elsewhere, that I'm told, "Great, we're offering you the job, but it could be two to three months before you receive a start date and hear from HR." That is just not practical for a job that's going to pay like $54,000 a year. I would say the issue is not just failure to attract, failure to offer hybrid, it's also low pay, bureaucracy, red tape, and insulting practices, frankly. I would love to offer those suggestions and see what you think. Thank you for taking my call.

Brigid Bergin: Alexis, thanks so much. Thanks for your work in the Test and Trace Corps. That was really important work. Grace, we're giving you lots of suggestions here, free suggestions this morning from Brian Lehrer Show listeners.

Grace Rauh: I love it.

Brigid Bergin: Really important points, right? You can attract great talent, but if it takes too long to get through the hiring process, you still end up with that vacancy.

Grace Rauh: Oh, absolutely. What is alarming is that the timeline that Alexis shared of two to three months, while I completely agree with her that that is not acceptable, we spoke with people who were waiting six to nine months to get that green light, which is just-- no one can operate like that. Anyone who's out there looking for a job, if they are highly qualified, they will definitely get another job offer during that time. If they're looking at a private sector, probably has higher pay.

To Alexis' point about the folks like herself who were part of the Test and Trace Corps being dismissed, one of the points that we make in here around retention, and the importance of retaining talented workers and keeping them from running for the exits, is that it's also a cost-saving measure. It costs a lot more money to go out and recruit someone new and onboard them and train them and get them up and running. When you have somebody who is good, who is already part of the city workforce, we should be doing everything we can to keep that person engaged and employed and continuing to deliver for New Yorkers, because frankly, once they're part of the team, losing them was going to cost us a lot of money. That's another factor at play here and part of the argument for why it makes a lot of good economic sense to not just focus on recruitment, but also on retention.

Brigid Bergin: Grace, just want to share one more listener reaction from Twitter. Alma writes, "Our son has qualified for a number of services through the DOE as part of their early childhood intervention program. We have been waiting for over five months to actually be paired with therapists he needs, and we're told it's because of staff shortages." Just another example of the way this staff shortage is impacting New Yorkers. Grace, I'm wondering, what kinds of conversations are you and others from 5BORO having with City Hall about these recommendations. What kind of reaction are you getting? Do you think anything's going to start changing?

Grace Rauh: [unintelligible 00:21:20]  things are already starting to change incrementally. There was the memo that came out just this week from the city's budget director promising to have his agency respond to hiring requests within 10 days. I don't know definitively if that means they're going to say yes or no, or they'll just get back to you with some guidance on what's next, but committing to a much faster timeline in terms of dealing with those hiring requests, and also an acknowledgement of the role, that seems very obvious to all of us, that pay has in hiring decisions and recruitment.

The budget director saying that for roles that have had incredibly high attrition, that have been hard to fill, they're willing to raise pay by 15%. Those are really positive early signs coming out of the administration. I think the fact that the city is planning to pilot a hybrid work program in June is also very, very positive. I fully understand the Mayor's outlook on this issue, which was for a long time that he wanted city workers to lead by example and get people back into the office and into our business areas and into restaurants, and out on the town, all of those things.

At this point, it's something like less than 10% of office workers are in New York five days a week, so the city and its workforce increasingly has become an outlier. That is problematic. Hybrid work seems like it is here to stay, so it does feel like the city needs to get on board. We've been applauding the Mayor's decision to pilot a hybrid work program for the city, and we think this is the direction that they need to go in.

Brigid Bergin: Grace, a lot for us to watch on this front going forward. I'll tell you, we have several more callers who are still on the board that we're not going to be able to get to with stories about either working for the city or trying to work for the city and expressing frustrations about the hiring process or retention process. You certainly have a lot cut out for you. Thank you so much for joining us. Grace Rauh is executive director of the 5BORO Institute, a recently-formed New York City-based think tank, whose first report is on the staffing crisis in New York City agencies. Always great to talk to you.

Grace Rauh: Thank you. Great to talk to you too. Thanks for having me on.

 

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