The vacancy rate in state jobs is a problem for NC. What Cooper, lawmakers want to do.

With a vacancy rate for state employees of more than 23%, the governor and legislature are looking for solutions in recruitment, retention and pay.

Gov. Roy Cooper’s budget proposal released on Wednesday asks for raises, more paid time off and bonuses for state employees.

State government’s job vacancy rate before the coronavirus pandemic was 12.3%, State Budget Director Kristin Walker said. It’s now at 23.4%.

“Recruitment and training cost money and we are to the point of pay now and keep folks, or pay later when they walk out the door. It’s that simple,” Ardis Watkins, the executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, said in a statement to The News & Observer that panned Cooper’s proposed raises as inadequate.

Cooper is calling for 8% across-the-board pay increases for state employees over the next two years, starting with the 2023-24 fiscal year that begins July 1.

Here’s what he wants for state workers:

▪ The proposed 8% raises, which would give employees 5% the first year and 3% the second year.

▪ An additional 1.5% for employees who are on step plans, which includes law enforcement and correctional officers, Walker said.

▪ An additional raise pool of 3% to agencies to increase salaries “over and above that, across the board, particularly for the hard-to-grow jobs,” Cooper said. The budget proposal calls those funds an “enhanced labor market adjustment reserve.”

▪ $1,500 retention bonuses for state employees making less than $75,000, or $1,000 for those making more than $75,000. The bonuses would be paid in two installments.

▪ A 2% recurring cost-of-living-adjustment increase for retired employees.

▪ Changes to the annual leave policy for state employees, adding from one to three more paid days off depending on total years of service.

▪ A shift of longevity pay to retention pay, which would slightly increase the rate of longevity pay for employees with more than 10 years of experience but less than 25 years of experience. It would add retention pay of 1% to 1.5% for those in their first two to nine years of service. Employees with more than 25 years of service would remain at the same rate of 4.5%.

Raises in the House budget

Watkins said Cooper’s budget contains raises “that do not even match inflation.”

“SEANC takes this staffing crisis seriously and will be asking legislators for raises and bonuses that show they do as well,” Watkins said. “We are not saving taxpayers any money by offering them 77% of the services for each dollar they pay, and that’s what a 23% vacancy rate does.”

The inflation rate in February was at 6%, and hovered around 9% this past summer.

State employees at the Department of Health and Human Services’ mental health facilities who are in UE Local 150, the Public Service Workers Union, have protested understaffing and called for raises for hourly workers for more than a year, including on Wednesday.

House Speaker Tim Moore said Wednesday that legislators won’t propose as big a pay discrepancy in raises for teachers and state employees as the one Cooper proposed, with 18% for teachers and less than half that, at 8%, for state employees across the board.

On recruitment and retention of state employees, Moore said they are considering bonuses and incentives especially for those jobs that have had high turnover or are difficult to fill.

“We realized the needs that so many state employees have — and without saying what our numbers are, because we’re still in that process — we feel like the plan that we have is one that state employees would appreciate,” Moore said.

Vacancies in state agencies

State Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, a Republican, sounded the vacancy alarm to state lawmakers during a committee meeting last week.

“We’re not competitive, salary-wise” with other state agencies or private-sector jobs, Troxler said about the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The agency’s vacancy rate is at 17%, he said, with some positions especially hard to fill.

Fewer people doing the work is “problematic,” he said. “We need to attract good people and we need to keep good people,” Troxler said.

”It’s about salary. There’s no other reason but salary.”

Berger said beyond salary issues, he thinks the state needs to look at the pipeline for potential employees.

“I think it’s fair to say that we’d be looking at all options as far as that’s concerned. But ultimately, the real problem we have at this time is, there just aren’t enough people looking for jobs, to fill all the jobs that are out there,” he said.

Berger told reporters that Troxler hit on one of the things that leaders will look at carefully.

“And that is, are we having shortages because folks that heretofore worked for us, but are being lured away by the fact that either another governmental entity, primarily another governmental entity, is paying more?” Berger said.

“I think is a little more difficult for us to get into a one-on-one competition with the private sector, where we raise governmental salaries, and that then causes folks in the private sector to go up as well. It’s a very complicated thing. There really is no simple answer. And I mean, it is a very real problem.”

Cooper, legislature move to use experience, not just degrees

Earlier this week, Cooper issued an executive order for his administration to factor in work experience, not just college degrees, in hiring for open state jobs.

Job postings will be updated to say that directly related experience can be considered in place of education requirements for most positions that may not need them. However, already about 75% of state jobs don’t require a college degree or already allow experience as a substitute.

“People who have been working in a similar role successfully for years should be on equal footing with applicants with academic degrees,” State Human Resources Director Barbara Gibson said in a statement. She said they want more qualified candidates to apply for positions across state government.

A bill in the legislature would change the law to consider other experience instead of higher education.

Senate Bill 239 (and the House version, House Bill 210), called “Reduce Barriers to State Employment,” if it becomes law, would have state jobs’ requirements be evaluated regularly, assess whether experience including military training is equivalent to a four-year college degree, and remove language in job descriptions about college degrees if it is unnecessary for that job.

That bill was sent to the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday, which is the last stop before going to a vote on the Senate floor. It is likely to pass, as Senate leader Phil Berger, an Eden Republican, indicated his support for it this week to reporters.