Millennials and Gen Z are swiping left on public service jobs, and Hawaii’s state and local governments are feeling the sting.

With crucial positions going vacant, the race is on to entice the next wave of public servants. But what will it take to make civil service more appealing?

First, let’s understand the problem.

As Civil Beat’s Kevin Dayton reported in January, Hawaii has had 15,000 fewer people in the workforce since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020. Overall, Hawaii’s population is continuing to shrink. Our state government workforce is shrinking, too.

As of December, 27% of positions in state government were vacant. Employees are leaving public service faster than departments can hire new workers, according to a report by the Department of Human Resources Development. To make matters worse, the department pointed out that 29% of state workers will be eligible to retire in the next five years.

The executive branch’s workforce comprised 46,189 employees in June. One-fifth of those employees are under the age of 35. Nearly 70% of young state workers are employed in the Department of Education or the University of Hawaii.

Clearly, other state departments face an impending crisis as older workers are retiring without younger workers in place to absorb their knowledge and continue their functions. This problem could grind state and local governments to a halt.

So why can’t the government recruit and retain younger workers?

In an email, Randy Perreira, executive director of the Hawaii Government Employees Association, which is Hawaii’s largest union, explained, “Young workers in Hawaii feel the same stresses as those across the country, perhaps even more so. For one, wages here are woefully inadequate to afford our cost of living, let alone pay down student debt, purchase a home and afford childcare for young families.”

Indeed, Perreira’s assessment tracks closely with a research brief distributed by Mission Square Research, which conducted an extensive study on public sector workers 35 and under.

Their findings show that salary, burnout and a desire for more remote work were the top three reasons young state and local government employees consider leaving their positions. Nearly two-thirds of employees cited personal finances and increasing living costs as significant causes of stress, and 73% were concerned about their levels of debt.

Student debt, in particular, appears to be a major barrier for young workers considering a public service career. In February, Mission Square research reported public service workers’ student loan debt was slightly below the national average. But that statistic doesn’t tell the whole story.

In Hawaii, Perreira said, “Occupations such as Office Assistant, Educational Assistant and Plans Examiners in the counties all earn wages that place them at the ALICE level in our community; and even professional positions such as School Psychologists, Engineers and Speech Language Pathologists are well below what they should earn based on the educational requirements for their jobs. All of this is topped off by high housing and childcare costs along with a significant contribution for medical coverage.”

In other words, state workers in many hard-to-fill positions can’t pay off the student debt they acquired for the degrees their jobs required and afford to live in Hawaii.

President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness programs will provide some relief as the administration targets public sector workers and low-income borrowers for debt cancellation. On Friday, he announced he intends to cancel another $7.4 billion in debt, bringing the total amount of student debt relief to $160.4 billion. But the state has work to do too.

According to Perreira, “State and county employers need to abandon their obsession and commitment to an outdated classification system and look more to the market to determine appropriate pay rates. They need to get off the outdated fallacy that government employees have a benefit package ‘second to none’ and realize that the private sector has caught if not passed government as an employer of choice.”

One example is health insurance coverage. Hawaii’s Prepaid Health Care Act caps private sector employees’ health insurance contributions to 1.5% of their monthly wages. Private-sector employers are required to cover the rest of the premium, but government employers are exempt.

To stay competitive, our state and local governments should, at least, apply the rules of the Prepaid Health Care Act to themselves.

In addition to improved health insurance coverage and pay raises, government employers should also consider creating more remote work opportunities and increasing job flexibility. These are major considerations for younger workers. And, as Perreira pointed out, “the government has been going in the opposite direction.”

Nationally, young public workers cite work/life balance, health insurance coverage and the ability to serve the public as the most common factors that attracted them to their roles in state and local government.

Yet, Hawaii’s civil servants are experiencing these benefits less and less. The rising cost of living combined with low wages are driving financial insecurity.

Meanwhile, public workers’ sense of satisfaction from their roles is dampened as they find themselves doing the work of multiple positions to compensate for vacancies, impacting their ability to serve the public.

This session, legislators submitted a handful of bills aimed at recruiting and retaining employees in key state positions. Most of those bills failed.

The best option now is to ensure the additional funds and positions allocated to the Department of Human Resources Development in the current draft of this year’s budget remain so at least the state can increase its hiring efforts and alleviate the pressure on current state workers.

Next session, the governor and the Legislature will need to be more creative if they want to stem the flow of young workers away from public service.