Transit Industry Workforce Development Challenges and Mitigations

According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the U.S. had over 10 million job openings and only 5.7 million unemployed workers in March 2023. In 2017, long before the pandemic, the Washington Post was touting that there were not enough workers to fill the vacancies, as the U.S. Census Bureau announced a 17-year low in unemployment while the Bureau of Labor Statistics hit record streaks for numbers of job openings. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the employment challenges that the U.S. already faced. To top it all, the COVID-19 pandemic also led to increased retirement rates among those close to retirement age. Funded through the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San José State University (SJSU), the objective of this research is to summarize workforce development challenges in the transit industry, and detail major findings and recommendations of ways to mitigate those challenges and attract and retain talent in the transit industry.

Beyond U.S. workforce challenges, there are specific challenges that are somewhat unique to the transit industry. The transit industry often requires stringent work hours, with non-competitive pay, and many employees are forced to reside excessive distances from where they work, as more remote areas tend to cost less to rent. Additionally, with some states deciding to legalize recreational drug use while the federal government continues to prohibit use, this adds a level of difficulty to attracting qualified candidates to the transit industry.

This presentation will focus on the strategies to attract and retain talent in the transportation industry, with an emphasis on the actionable takeaways for every stakeholder type whether acting as an individual, an accountable executive, a professional association or organization representative, or a university or school representative, there are specific actions that can be taken to join in the fight to attract and retain our workforce, including social media recruiting, online hiring platform improvement, partnerships with career centers, universities, and recruitment centers to attract new employees to the transit workforce. In addition, increases in pay, benefits, bonuses, providing flexible schedule options and some other atypical ideas have successfully been used to retain workers in the transit workforce. Namely, this research will focus on ways in which transit agencies can invest in all aspects of their workforce development, to ensure that qualified employees choose the transit industry, and they are subsequently trained to be the most beneficial asset to the organization.