Help Wanted: Honolulu Needs 3,000 Workers For City Jobs 0 The city’s high job vacancy rate is leaving residents waiting for services, as city officials scramble to try to hire new people in a tight labor market.
Honolulu’s city staffing crisis is affecting people all over the island.
The popular Summer Fun program is serving 2,000 fewer kids this year than city parks officials originally hoped because they couldn’t find enough staff.
The Honolulu Police Department’s workforce is down by almost a third, including some 350 sworn officers and hundreds more civilians, people who answer emergency calls, manage computer databases, process evidence and pursue parking violations.
The Department of Planning and Permitting is short 90 workers. Developers and homeowners seeking building permits say they are seeing a beleaguered core of overworked employees juggling increasingly complex design paperwork, often too overwhelmed to answer the phones.
These are all signs of an overall staffing problem. The city is grappling with a 26% job vacancy rate—with 3,079 positions open and unfilled in a workforce budgeted for 11,668.