Bags of sticks, leaves and grass lined the streets of Kirkwood.
After months of watching them stack up in the Atlanta neighborhood, resident Aaron Glover did the city’s job for them. He rented a truck in late July and hauled nearly 100 bags of lawn trimmings from 41 homes on his block to the DeKalb County landfill. The 35-year-old fraud investigator said yard debris collections stopped completely in May, and he was unable to get anyone to tell him why.
Glover’s experience is not unique. From police and sheriff’s deputies to garbage collectors and lifeguards keeping a watchful eye over pools, public agencies across metro Atlanta are struggling to find enough workers to get the job done.
Officials from a half dozen cities and counties interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution say staffing levels are down this year.
In Atlanta, vacancies in solid waste have for weeks left the city unable to collect yard waste from some curbsides. A city spokesperson said Aug. 4 it’s a conundrum affecting municipalities nationwide, one that has grown to historic levels both for public and private trash service providers.
Atlanta officials held a job fair July 30 to recruit trash collectors. The city has hired temporary workers and in late July limited yard debris pickup to every other week.
Cobb County has 764 vacancies in its workforce of about 5,000 employees, according to Deputy County Manager Jimmy Gisi. The county typically has less than 500 open positions.
It’s not just bags of trash piling up.
Staffing at the Fulton County Public Defender Office, which provides legal representation to the indigent, dropped about 10% below normal levels this year. But last month, county officials began a massive hiring rush dubbed Project Orca that endeavors to hire 320 new county employees by year’s end. New hires will be tasked with handling over 206,000 backlogged cases in the county’s court system.
Marietta recently had 15 unfilled positions for trash collectors, traffic signal technicians and fleet mechanics. That’s about three times the norm, according to Mark Rice, Marietta’s director of Public Works.
Rice said his department had only seen two job applicants since spring.
“It just seems like they dried up the last three or four months. They just stopped,” Rice said. “Everyone needs workers right now.”
Help wanted
Economists say the shortages began earlier this year as COVID vaccines became more readily available and the economy started reopening. According to a May report from The Conference Board, a nonprofit research group, labor supply in the U.S. is constrained and shortages will likely last through most of 2021.
Jason Delaney, a professor of economics at Georgia Gwinnett College, said the job market seems to be in a transition period as potential employees try to “figure out what the new normal is going to look like.”
Many people have learned what it’s like to work from home and had time to reflect on their future. Delaney said those potential employees are now coming to terms with their job prospects in a post-pandemic market.
“This is growing pains. And I’ll say, growing pains are unevenly distributed and some people really do bear the brunt of that,” he told the AJC. “Some employers are really going to get hit hard. If you have a very labor intensive industry, there’s not a lot you can do about that. It’s going to be hard times for a little while.”
Credit: Matt Bruce
Credit: Matt Bruce
Those still on the job are working harder. Cobb County has had to increase overtime as a stopgap while department heads work to replenish depleted staffs.
Cobb’s water department has been among the hardest hit. Agency director Judy Jones said about 41% of the meter installation positions are unfilled along with 17% of system maintenance jobs. Those who’ve applied for work have refused job offers because the pay is too low or they haven’t been able to pass background tests, Jones said. The county is in the midst of a wage study that could adjust the overall pay scale for Cobb employees.
There have not yet been any disruptions in essential services, but Cobb County officials told the AJC they may soon have to start discussing possible service cuts if they can’t find a solution to the staffing problem.
“I think most folks, they’re able to meet our needs by offering the overtime. But eventually, employees are going to burn out a little bit,” Gisi said. “Money is great, but money is not everything. ... And there may come a point where the money’s just not as attractive as being home sometimes. So we’re teeter tottering on the edge, we’re just not quite there yet.”
To lure workers, some cities and counties are raising starting salaries while others are dangling signing bonuses.
Gwinnett County has offered signing bonuses up to $2,000 for some positions that are difficult to fill in law enforcement, fire and EMS services. The county has seen a slight decrease in the number of qualified applicants this year, leading to shortages in public safety. Of the 482 vacant positions in Gwinnett, 257 are in police, fire and correctional services.
In Smyrna, there are 28 vacancies in Public Works, primarily in sanitation. The city has used temporary trash collectors to fill those gaps, City Administrator Joe Bennett said.
A shortage of camp counselors forced Smyrna to whittle this year’s summer camp down from 100 campers each week to 30. The parks department also had to adjust pool hours at Tolleson Park because of a short supply of lifeguards.
“It’s the same as everyone else is experiencing. The labor market that we’re currently in is tough,” Bennett said. “Positions that we at one time would see over 100 applications for, now we’re seeing single digits.”
Marietta has hired temporary workers from staffing agencies to fill labor intensive vacant positions like trash collection. At a city job fair Aug. 6, the goal was to make at least 10 new hires. Only 19 people showed up, but 12 left with job offers, said city spokeswoman Lindsey Wiles.
Nicholas Galvez was offered a position as a sanitation worker. A food industry worker for the past six years, Galvez heard about the hiring event on Facebook and saw it as a chance to make a career change.
“No one wants to work in food at the moment, so that’s honestly why I’m here,” he said. “I’m not going to keep working for a company where it’s only one or two people (working) at max. And there’s really nothing to do to help us out, to make the job easier.”
Dallas resident Andrew Griffin was another applicant at the Marietta fair. He was laid off over two months ago and said he’d filled out more than 70 applications. While employers clamor for workers, Griffin felt there are actually few jobs available.
“I’ve applied to endless places,” he said. All these places say they’re hiring now, bonus this, desperate that. And I’m like clearly they’re not that desperate or they would be hiring more people.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
About the Author
