Long Beach weighs new hiring process as almost a quarter of jobs sit vacant

With a hiring crisis on its hands, the Long Beach city council is scheduled to meet next week with the goal of streamlining the process.

Throughout the city, 22% of jobs are vacant, with some departments reporting vacancy rates over 35%, City Manager Tom Modica wrote to the council . It took the city 377 business days to approve a list of candidates for a clerk typist position and 362 calendar days for a position at the Long Beach port, he wrote.

The city "is grappling with a major organizational crisis with an inefficient and outdated recruitment and hiring process," Modica wrote.

He proposed that the council put a measure on the November ballot to merge two agencies in charge of hiring and prioritize local candidates, with the goal of reducing hiring times from seven months to 4½.

The city council meeting will take place Tuesday, as originally reported by the Long Beach Watchdog .

Though the hiring process could be streamlined, a multitude of factors have driven the hiring troubles, said Brandon Nottingham, a business representative for the local chapter of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

In negotiations with the city, the union has argued that job vacancy rates are between 20% and 40% partly because pay was not competitive.

Long Beach can often be a "training ground" for city employees, Nottingham said. "People come into the city of Long Beach, they get trained up and realize they get paid better somewhere else."

The hiring process can take "seven to nine months," he said, and a new proposal to lower the process to 90 business days would equate to "five or so months."

"We understand that there is a hiring problem, a retention problem," Nottingham said. "We do need to pay our folks more in this city and that would help retain folks."

Additionally, Long Beach faces workforce issues that are common across cities, he said. A new generation of workers expects the flexibility to work from home and is more comfortable switching jobs, Nottingham said.

Ultimately, Nottingham said the city and the union have the same goal of hiring more people and solving the vacancy issue.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .