State and local government employees are essential in delivering everyday services to the American public, but the government’s labor force is understaffed and has yet to recover from its pandemic lows. The reasons range from lower pay and less advancement, to little flexibility in areas such as remote working. Private-sector jobs have already surpassed pre-pandemic levels, while in the public sector, government employers are still looking for more than 664,000 workers with little success. This may sound like one of those “so what” kinds of issues but consider this. Public employees operate the nation’s trains, subways, and buses in addition…
Insights & Advice
Tag: public school labor shortage
The teacher shortage
The U.S. labor shortage is hitting the public education sector hard. Yes, COVID-19 and its mutations have had a lot to do with the lack of teachers, but the problem predates the pandemic. In just the last two months, 65,000 public education employees left the industry. Across the United States, in October 2021, there were 575,000 fewer state and local education employees than in February 2020, according to the latest employment report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The pandemic, in some ways, was simply the straw that broke this camel’s back. Stagnant wages, or worse, falling wages, have beset…