Challenges in recruitment and retention of state employees continue to bog down public services, according to budget documents.
In recent months, the Fairbanks Pioneer Home, a state-operated assisted-living facility, has reduced its capacity because of a shortage of staff. The Alaska Psychiatric Institute in Anchorage, the only public inpatient mental health facility in the state, relies on contracted staff rather than employees to provide care. The Division of Juvenile Justice has closed its Fairbanks facility due to staffing shortages.
The Alaska Marine Highway System, which has been plagued by staff shortages the past three years, forcing the tie-up of vessels, reports it continues to face challenges “due to recruitment and staffing difficulties for licensed crew.”
According to an October report for the ferry system’s public advisory board, the vessels were short 77 crew members and had terminated more crew than the state had hired through the first nine months of the year.
The December budget documents, prepared by agencies throughout state government, lay out the challenges officials expect in the coming fiscal year. Almost every department lists staffing shortages or recruitment and retention as one of its top problems or priorities.
Recent data shows that vacancies in state government have remained persistently high. In December 2023, 14.8% of full-time state positions were vacant. In December 2024, 13.9% of full-time positions in the state’s payroll system were vacant, according to information collected by Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s Office of Budget and Management. More than 23% of part-time permanent positions were vacant.
Departments report that the vacancies have hurt services ranging from fisheries monitoring to payroll processing to services for mentally ill Alaskans. Even as some state offices have added new positions to target recruitment, launched new hiring programs and offered sign-on bonuses, keeping key positions filled remains a challenge.
Legislators appropriated money in 2023 for a salary survey to review whether the state was adequately compensating its workers. But the Dunleavy administration has delayed the study’s release, citing data gaps and missing information in the preliminary report.
The study was supposed to be completed in June, but the administration has asked for the report to be delayed until March due to what it has said was missing data on salary increases approved by lawmakers and through collective bargaining agreements with public employee unions.
Lawmakers have increasingly raised alarms about the delay in releasing the salary information, which could mean that the study’s conclusions will not be incorporated in the coming budget cycle.
Anchorage Republican Sen. Cathy Giessel, who last year championed an effort to address the state’s recruitment issues by improving public employee pension options, said she was concerned over the delay in releasing the study “in light of the large number of vacancies in state government and local government.”
“I think there’s suspicion that the salaries and wages are so much lower than the private sector that it is part of the recruitment and retention problem. So it is odd that no information has been released,” Giessel said.
At least one department confirmed in its budget document the suspicion that other employers pay more than the state. According to the Department of Fish and Game, federal agencies currently pay 37% more than the state for some equivalent positions, including biologists. The gap between Alaska’s compensation structure and that of the federal government has “widened in recent years,” department officials said.
Earlier this month, Dunleavy named recruitment and retention as one of his office’s key challenges. Spokespeople from the governor’s office did not respond to questions about Dunleavy’s plans to address the state’s recruitment and retention shortcomings.
Numerous state departments cited recruitment and retention problems in their budget documents.
The Department of Administration is “struggling to fill both entry-level positions and professional positions. Positions can sit vacant for long periods of time with work shifted to current employees, resulting in significant amounts of overtime, job dissatisfaction and retention challenges,” department staff wrote in their budget proposal for the coming fiscal year.
In the Department of Law, less than half of attorneys have held their positions for more than four years.
The Department of Public Safety stated that statewide hiring challenges have “significantly impacted” the department’s ability to recruit and retain personnel. As of November, 17% of the department’s full-time positions were unfilled.
Daily News reporter Sean Maguire and the Sentinel contributed reporting for this story.
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