Yes, and they can't even fill the positions they have under that cap.
'“Whether the root cause is a lack of money, that’s still to be determined. Or whether it’s how we’re spending the money that’s already appropriated,” Boliek said.' From your article.
If it cap salary at 2000 levels then that you won’t be able to fill. That’s happening all over the federal government. The pay is so low the only way the compensation works is if employees do the bare minimum
Government employees have been getting COLAs. It just appears that the private sector has been giving larger increases and is subject to more competition. For example, as a developer you can job hop or negotiate raises in the private sector, but that doesn’t work in the public sector. I think inflation and wage growth in the covid era hit this especially hard. Why would I want to deal with DMV customers all day for $45k when I could work at an Amazon warehouse for $70k or even Walmart/McDonald's/etc for $50k?
Also the high cost of living areas jobs don’t adjust appropriately for costs in the local areas. A post office job in the city pays almost as much as one in the middle of nowhere but the costs are radically different
"I saw they increased pay by 5%, authorized retention bonus, and are supposed to add about a 5% increase in the number of license workers." From the context.
You can also read the articles back in the context, including things like the audit where they are investing if it's that they don't get enough money or if they aren't spending it well. If you can make technological advancements that increase efficiency, then it's stupid to just throw more bodies at the problem. Studying the problem makes sense before political finger pointing.
They can't fill and retain the positions because of a number of factors, but in a large part the pay is about $45k/yr and people find better options. They had almost 25% vacancies after covid, likely due to the wage growth in many other low paying sectors.
