Industry News

On July 20, 2021, the MissionSquare Research Institute (formerly the Center for State and Local Government Excellence at ICMA-RC or SLGE) released its survey report, Public Sector Employee Views on Finances and Employment Outlook Due to COVID-19. The national online survey updates the previous polling conducted in May and October 2020 and found that state and local workers had increased financial debt and ongoing COVID-19 worries. 

Among the public sector workforce, positive job morale increased to 56% in May 2021, up from 41% in October 2020. However, about 31% of respondents indicate that working during the pandemic has caused them to consider changing jobs and, of those, 25% would consider leaving the government sector, entirely.

Other key findings include:

• As of May 2021, 58% of state and local employees are working in person, up from 26% in May 2020;
• Of those engaged in any in-person work, 74% consider their jobs to be somewhat risky in terms of potential exposure to people who may have COVID-19;
• 81% are concerned about keeping their family safe from contracting COVID-19;
• 76% reported that the pandemic has impacted the nature of their job and 31% of those have found it to be very or extremely difficult to adjust to those changes;
• 43% reported being concerned about saving enough to be financially stable throughout retirement;
• 41% of respondents and their families reported being negatively impacted financially;
• 38% have used emergency savings to pay living expenses; and
• 31% have incurred more debt.

The results are based on a national survey conducted by Greenwald Research in May 2021 of over 1,200 full-time state and local government employees. The final data were weighted by age, gender, income and industry type to reflect the distribution of the state and local government workforce in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the U.S. Census of Governments.

The report is available here.