PLUMMER, Idaho — While North Idaho may be home to a hot economy, it’s not necessarily smooth sailing for all employers looking to hire. Some North Idaho cities have said they’re having a hard time hiring for certain city worker jobs.
In Plummer, city officials enacted a pay hike for two city maintenance crew member positions in an attempt to retain candidates.
"There's just nobody wanting to work, really,” said Plummer city clerk and treasurer Sara Allen of the city’s hiring challenges. The city is currently down two maintenance employees whose responsibilities include maintaining city streets, water and sewer lines, and parks among other jobs. While the city has filled the positions in months past, Allen said that hiring trained equipment operators was hard. “We're trying to train them. Once we get them trained, they leave for higher paying jobs."
With a shortage of city crew members, Allen said Plummer’s public works director and two existing employees are shouldering extra work. "So that just means that their rotation is going to take longer. They're not getting as much stuff done as they want to right now," she said.
A supply of high-paying jobs in the area could very well be a reason behind the city’s hiring challenges. Allen said in the instance of the two city crew members who recently left, at least one employee took a job that was paying $8 an hour more than what the city was offering.
According to Allen, the city of St. Maries was also facing challenges hiring city maintenance staff as well.
While less severe, some cities in Kootenai County said a strong economy was making it more difficult to hire for certain seasonal positions.
Kit Hoffer, a Post Falls spokeswoman, said the city’s Parks and Recreation department was having problems hiring seasonal parks employees. “I know we’ve had some problems filling positions over the past year,” said Hoffer in an email to KREM. “It’s not critical but think everyone in the area is feeling the problem to some degree.”
Coeur d’Alene’s Human Resources director echoed those remarks. “I would agree that it is more challenging with the current job market to fill our temporary/seasonal positions. There are just not as many people looking for that type of work right now.” said Melissa Tosi in an email. “However, with the competitive wages and benefits the City of Coeur d'Alene offers, we have been fortunate in finding quality candidates for our benefited positions.
Last week, the Idaho Department of Labor announced that the Gem State’s unemployment rate remained below three percent for the 19th consecutive month.
In Plummer, Allen said that the city is anxiously awaiting new employees to fill the vacant city crew positions in the coming weeks. "We're still short for two more weeks. And we have water lines that need to be replaced," Allen said.