Retirements, Resignations Hamper Police Hiring Progress: Survey
Law enforcement agencies all over the country are dealing with staffing challenges. And it’s been a big topic on Capitol Hill recently, with Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Jon Ossoff (D-GA) introducing legislation to provide emergency funding to fill key positions.
Now the annual survey from the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) looks at just how prevalent the problem is and whether law enforcement agencies are making any headway in overcoming the shortage.
The 2022 survey found that while hiring is picking up at many law enforcement agencies, those agencies are losing officers faster than they can hire new ones, meaning that total sworn staffing continues to fall.
The survey was sent to PERF members who are chief executives of their agencies. One hundred and eighty two responses were received from agencies in 38 states and D.C. Most of the responses were from local law enforcement agencies.
Responding agencies employed a total of roughly 79,500 sworn officers in 2022. Due to the composition of PERF’s membership, larger agencies were overrepresented in this survey.
Staffing
Survey recipients were asked to provide total sworn staffing numbers. The survey found that in January 2023, sworn staffing stood at 79,464 among the respondents. That was almost one percent lower than staffing levels in January 2022, and 4.8 percent lower than January 2020.
Hirings have rebounded since the 20 percent decline in 2020. In 2022, responding agencies hired 6,579 sworn officers. That’s nearly 35 percent more sworn officers than 2020, and 5.6 percent more than in 2019.
Resignations and retirements continue to cause staffing issues. There were 4,175 resignations among responding agencies in 2022. That is up 47 percent from the 2019 number.
Retirements fell slightly in 2022 from the prior year. There were 3,625 among responding agencies. However, that number is still up 19 percent from 2019.
As PERF notes, the findings “show both some good and bad news.”