From toilet paper to baby formula, now we face a national lifeguard shortage. The United States, still reeling in from the Covid-19 Pandemic, is low on lifeguards. Now that we are in summer, and demand is high for swimming, but many pools around the country are reducing hours due to low labor. One third of the nation’s pools are at risk of closure.
In Austin and Houston, both of those cities swimming pools are operating at either a seasonal capacity in Austin, and have pools that are not even open in Houston.
The Austin Parks and Recreation Department reports having less than third of their workforce necessary. They are doing a phased opening to their 29 seasonal pools to distribute their workforce due to the shortage.
Houston also is facing the same problem, having to keep pools unopened as their staffing is incredibly low. Houston reports only having 36 lifeguards, while the city has 37 pools. This keeps them from opening all swimming pools.
Covid-19 reduced pool labor and training availability. Additionally, during the pandemic people who would come back to lifeguarding jobs found better pay at other jobs, like restaurants or retail.
Additionally, lifeguarding is a minimum paying job, along with hours of unpaid training. Several pool areas have offered to pay more in face of the nationwide shortage. The Austin Parks and Recreation Department has increase lifeguard pay to $16 an hour including a $1250 sign on bonus for training and certification. Houston is giving a $300 dollar sign on for students to complete training.
American pools also relied on foreign students to make up shortages. Offering J-1 visas, Europeans could come to America and find work lifeguarding. However, during the pandemic, the Trump Administration halted J-1 visas. Thus, a shortage of foreign workers able to come to the United States.
Luckily for Brownwood, the Parks and Recreation Department was able to maintain their needed base of employees for the swimming pools.
“At this time, we have our seasonal pool positions 96% full. While preparing for a potential shortage we focused on retention with previous seasonal pool employees. This gave us a great start. For our first week open, we only had enough employees to offer 1 session. By the 2nd week of the season, we had enough staff hired and certified to host both daily sessions,” said Roland Soto, Director for Parks and Recreation
There were other non-lifeguard positions that were lacking in the Parks and Recreation Department. This gave them an idea of any potential shortage that may occur.
“We were able to secure some of our previous year lifeguards early on to fill enough positions to know which date we would be able to open,” said Soto. “Typically, we try to get an idea at the end of the season which lifeguards are interested in coming back next year.
Maybe our biggest challenge annually is keeping enough guards through the summer to stay open as long as we can. Due to the age demographic that fill those positions, we end up competing with football and volleyball, two-a-days, and students moving back to college.”
[Story by Jacob Lehrer]