Why workers are leaving local government

More data has been released about what’s going on with the state and local government workforce, including more insights into why people are leaving the public sector. In this week’s newsletter, I’ll walk you through the key takeaways.

An update on the Big Quit 

State and local job openings are climbing back up and now nearing the record high the sector reached this past summer. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics a total of 900,000 jobs are open in state/local government, second only to the peak of 920,000 openings last July. After a slight lull, separations are again rising again too—more than a quarter-million (277,000) people left the sector in January.

More than half (170,000) of those separations in January were due to people quitting. The remainder was a mix of retirements and discharges.

The data confirms the main sentiments of the MissionSquare Research Institute’s latest public workforce survey that employees are burnt out from the pandemic and leaving the public sector. Nearly two out of three respondents to the survey conducted in late 2021 reported that their organization has experienced more people leaving their jobs voluntarily since the start of the pandemic. Among those who have seen an increase, 78% say this has put a strain on their workload and 39% indicate it has put a significant strain on them.

The good news: Public employees value what they do. Six in ten survey respondents said “serving their community during this difficult time” was something they valued about their jobs and nearly half agreed the pandemic has made constituents more aware of the importance of local government workers. And just over half of respondents (51%) described their current morale regarding work as positive. 

The bad news: It’s not enough to stop people from leaving. According to MissionSquare, stress, burnout and anxiety are still the top three emotions employees feel about their government work, rankings that have not changed over the last year. Moreover, feelings of gratitude have plummeted—from nearly one-third of respondents at the beginning of the pandemic to 18%.

And it could get worse. The more people who leave, the more work—and stress—the employees still there have to manage. This, in turn, could prompt them to quit, too. That’s what happened with Allyson Brunette, a Wisconsin-based consultant who left local government in late 2021 after nine years. Pandemic-related staff shortages led to burnout that crept into her home life, she told Polco. “It was affecting more than my 9-to-5. It was my whole 24 hours.”

Getting people to stay isn’t just about salaries

Yes, employee pay is a big part of the growing indifference toward staying on the job. Salary increases and/or bonuses are the top actions employees said their bosses could take to help keep them on staff or reduce stress. But that’s super-obvious, so I’m going to focus on two other actions that might be more financially manageable.