Local Government County Says Economic Recovery Will Impact New Employee Cost

BRADENTON — At Tuesday's BOCC Work Session, members and staff reviewed the past and present protocols for county employee compensation. As the recovering economy reshapes itself, so will the method by which replacement employees are hired, and none of the remedies will come cheap.

During the recent recession, Manatee County whittled its number of employees down to just over 1,700; however, the county's current private unemployment (5.5 percent) numbers have returned to the pre-recession level.

Unfortunately, the labor pool is shrinking, down 53 percent from 2010, said Human Resource Manager James Chesnutt. He also spoke about how the faces of the 'growth industries' are changing.

Clean Tech, Life Sciences and Information Technologies head the list of the most demanding, and none of these professionals come cheap.

Some of the problems Manatee County is facing: neighboring counties are competing for the same workforce; the average compensation for government jobs in Florida is $49,293. In Manatee County, the average compensation $41,496. 

Rodney Barnes, Manatee County's Human Resource Director, said, "We are forced to compete for local talent."

Barnes said the county competes for IT professionals, engineers and skilled utility workers, and that the 'turnover' of these jobs is very expensive.

In Barnes and Chesnutt's presentation, they reviewed the expense of 'turnover.' Whether due to retirement, dismissed or quit, turnover cost the county almost $2,495.18 per position. The county's predicted average turnover rate will run around 250 employees a year through 2020.

Replacing the key long term employees that will retire soon will call for higher salaries than Manatee County is used to paying for. The current employees will see entry salaries of new workers at a level some employees have worked decades to get.

To work through all of the quagmires that lie in the path of the county having a sufficient labor team is a Evergreen Solutions, LLC study that will be ready with some of the answers in July of this year. 

The Evergreen report has a big order: find a way for Manatee County to hire skilled labor with less compensation to offer than other counties or the private sector, from a shrinking labor pool. 

Little information was offered to how and why the county was unable or unwilling to recognize the difficult position it now faces.

editor's note: a typo previously indicated that turnover cost $25,000 per incident.