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Apr 21, 2023

Editorial: Lifting the residency requirement is the fastest way to fill city job vacancies

St. Louis truck driver Vincent Rucker picks up a yard waste container in a

St. Louis truck driver Vincent Rucker picks up a yard waste container in a Lafayette Square alley on July 14, 2021.

The labor shortage is a big challenge for employers across the country, with signing bonuses and escalating pay scales providing the kinds of enticements necessary to lure talent. In St. Louis, the city government actually offers what a lot of would-be job candidates consider to be a big disincentive — a residency requirement that actually deters job seekers from applying. That needs to change.

A bill awaiting Missouri Gov. Mike Parson's signature would override local authority to set the employment rules and lift the residency requirement. Normally, we wouldn't be thrilled with the idea of state lawmakers bigfooting local government and taking away their powers of self-governance. But sometimes the pros of intervention outweigh the cons, and the acute city personnel shortage is one such situation. Even Mayor Tishaura Jones, also no fan of state intervention, wants Parson to sign the bill. Her predecessor, Lyda Krewson, also favored easing the residency requirement during her tenure as mayor.

A widespread misperception is that city jobs consist of the kinds of easy-to-fill jobs people see when they visit City Hall — desk clerks, file clerks, parking attendants, security personnel, office assistants, etc. Those seem like low-skilled positions that could be handled by any number of city residents who might be looking for work.

But hundreds of other jobs requiring far more specific skills are going begging for lack of available talent. And the available talent pool in a depopulating city of 300,000 isn't enough to address job vacancies such as criminal-intelligence analyst, contract compliance officer, information-security administrator or airport safety management systems program manager. The list of job openings on the city's website is voluminous. Even qualified refuse-collection truck drivers can't be filled with a strictly local talent pool.

A lot of those jobs already have a residency waiver but allow the personnel office to award bonus points on hiring scoresheets to applicants who reside in the city. Other jobs offer no wiggle room, which handcuffs managers’ ability to fill employment gaps.

Some of the concerns raised by critics on the Board of Aldermen are valid. Members worry that ending the residency requirement might prompt an exodus, as if to suggest that work is the only thing keeping people here. A local referendum to lift the requirement failed to win voter approval in 2020. State lawmakers decided to lift the residency requirement for police officers, yet the number of commissioned officers has dropped by 17%. However, at least half of that decline resulted from the $4 million budget cut that Jones imposed on police recruitment to satisfy her defund-the-police progressive backers.

Aldermen also note that cities like Chicago and New York have residency requirements. That's fine in cities with millions of residents, where the talent pool is vast. St. Louis doesn't have that luxury, and if state intervention is necessary to broaden the pool, so be it.

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