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Pensions Help to Recruit and Retain Public Safety Professionals
By: Tyler Bond, National Institute on Retirement Security
Defined benefit pensions help state and local governments to recruit and retain firefighters, police officers, and other public safety professionals. Retention rates in public safety pension plans are remarkably high, but states that have closed plans have seen turnover rates increase noticeably.
This is an excerpt from NCPERS Fall 2024 issue of PERSist.Defined benefit pensions help state and local governments to recruit and retain firefighters, police officers, and other public safety professionals. Retention rates in public safety pension plans are remarkably high, but states that have closed plans have seen turnover rates increase noticeably.
In September it was announced that the city of Jacksonville, FL will resume offering defined benefit (DB) pensions to its firefighters and police officers in 2027. This will end nearly a decade of Jacksonville public safety professionals participating in a defined contribution (DC) retirement plan after the Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund was closed to new hires on October 1, 2017.
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When discussing the decision to resume offering pensions, Todd Norman, the chief of employee and labor relations for the city of Jacksonville, was quoted as saying “The pension is still the gold standard in public safety… It keeps folks on board, and it's what is expected."
Recent research supports Norman's assertion. The National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) released a report in June that examined the role of DB pensions in recruiting and retaining public safety professionals. The report found that 52 percent of new hires in a public safety pension plan are expected to retire from that plan, which is an astonishingly high level of employee retention.
The ability to recruit and retain firefighters and police officers has become critical in recent years. While state and local governments have struggled with maintaining their workforces over the fifteen years since the end of the Global Financial Crisis, the challenge of maintaining a robust public safety workforce has become particularly acute, partly as a result of the difficulties presented by the pandemic.
Figure 7 in the NIRS report displays the annual turnover rates for a subset of five plans. It shows exactly what one would expect to see. Turnover is somewhat higher in the first five years as workers decide whether public safety is the right career for them. Then, after about year five, turnover declines and remains remarkably low throughout the middle portion of a worker's career until retirement provisions take effect and turnover spikes as would be expected.
One major reason city, county, and state governments offer DB pensions to police officers and firefighters is because a more experienced public safety workforce is a more effective one.
The report highlights a few instances of states that closed or significantly changed pension plans and the impact that had on recruitment and retention of public safety professionals. Alaska closed its statewide Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) plan in 2006. The PERS plan covered most public safety professionals in Alaska and those workers now participate only in a DC plan. This has resulted in nearly crisis levels of worker shortages across Alaska. The city of Fairbanks does not have police officers on patrol between 8 am and 12 pm each day due to low staffing levels, while the borough assembly of another jurisdiction encouraged residents to arm themselves for protection due to the sparse coverage from public safety.
DB pensions are effective at reducing employee turnover because they address the three Rs of workforce management: recruitment, retention, and retirement. This workforce management is especially important for public safety professions as those jobs tend to be more physically and emotionally demanding and there are frequently defined lengths of time for a public safety career. The NIRS report found that the average tenure for a police officer was 18 years, while for a firefighter it was 20 years. The pension plays an important role in attracting people to the job, keeping them there during their career, and then helping them transition into retirement when appropriate.
Several years ago NIRS surveyed public employees, including police officers and firefighters, and asked them about retirement and their pension benefits. The people who are doing these dangerous jobs serving the public overwhelmingly supported DB pensions as effective tools for recruiting and retaining public safety professionals. If policymakers want to know what the consequences would be of changing pension benefits, they should ask the people doing the work and earning the pension. Their answers are backed up by both data and real-world experience.
The first public pension plan in the United States was offered to New York City police officers in 1857. It was expanded to include firefighters a decade later. DB pensions have become an established part of a public safety career in the decades since. These plans have continued to demonstrate their value over the years, as the research suggests and the experiences of places like Jacksonville shows.
Bios: Tyler Bond is the research director for the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS). He works with the executive director to plan all NIRS research products. Since joining NIRS, Bond has authored or co-authored numerous research reports, issue briefs, and fact sheets on a wide range of topics relating to retirement security. He regularly speaks at conferences about NIRS research and testifies before policymakers.
Previously, Bond spent four years at the National Public Pension Coalition, where he directed the research program and authored six original research reports. He also has held positions on Capitol Hill and at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Bond holds a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Indiana University and an M.A. in public policy from The George Washington University. He is a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance.
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