State braces for worker exodus

Agencies face a challenge: finding new workers as boomers retire

Despite consecutive years of across-the-board pay increases, North Carolina is struggling to attract and keep quality workers. Coming baby-boomer retirements will highlight gaps in pay and benefits between the state and private sectors, according to a N.C. Office of State Personnel report last week.

If the state doesn't keep up, government services will decline, economists and demographers say. To cope, the state might have to offer more pay and better benefits and try a more creative approach to recruiting.

"The private sector has an advantage, because it has deeper pockets," said Jim Johnson, a UNC-Chapel Hill business professor who studies the effects of demographic changes on the workplace. "If the gaps get too big, the private sector will just cherry-pick employees in areas that are hard to hire and the overall community suffers as a result."

Dana Cope, executive director of the State Employees Association of North Carolina, knows that government workers are an easy target when complaints about taxes and service arise. He understandably disagrees with that view but said regardless of what people think, increasing the gap between private and public sector jobs won't solve anything.

"No matter where you are across the country, government and bureaucrats get a bad rap," Cope said. "But our goal is still to provide quality service to taxpayers -- and that costs money."

More specifically, it costs about $11 billion a year to cover the salaries and benefits for about 120,000 state employees.

Taxpayers pay for a small army of field inspectors, office clerks, data processors, engineers, teachers and a host of other jobs. And those workers aren't getting any younger.

About 35 percent of the state's work force is older than 50. The average age since 1987 has jumped to 48 from 36.

Even new hires aren't necessarily young.

After 27 self-employed years in construction, Ronnie Abbott of Fuquay-Varina decided to get a "regular job."

So at 56, he became a state employee, working in the standards division of the N.C. Department of Agriculture.

Abbott inspects scanners and makes sure packaging labels match contents. He likes the job, and he really appreciates the paid holidays.

But when he gathers with co-workers, he can't help but notice something.

"There aren't many young employees there," he said. "A lot of them are like me, coming in after already having a career somewhere else."

That would describe Sam Cain of Cary, 59, a gas station inspector who worked full-time with the National Guard before retiring in 2003.

"I don't know how a young guy living in Wake County could afford to do this," said Cain, who started working for the state in 2005 at less than $30,000 a year.

"We had enough income after I retired, but then extra things came up, and I knew I had to go back to work," Cain said. "For what I needed, this job is fine, but probably not for a young guy."

That wasn't always the case in North Carolina. State pay was - never considered high, but generous medical benefits, a solid pension and the promise of a job forever kept positions filled. Then the recessions of the '80s and '90s chipped away at benefits, and people's attitudes about employer loyalty changed.

"Graduates today already expect to work for nine different employers during a career, so that reduces an advantage the state has always enjoyed," UNC-CH sociologist Arne Kalleberg said. "Besides, it's no longer unheard of for public employees to lose their jobs."

The challenge of attracting younger workers is most obvious when the state competes for young college graduates, Cope said.