Common wisdom has it that people aren’t attracted to jobs in the public sector for the pay—but compensation appears to be a fundamental problem in hanging onto personnel. According to a 2022 MissionSquare Research Institute survey, 51 percent of human resource professionals in local and state government said exit surveys revealed that uncompetitive compensation was among employees’ top three reasons for leaving. This beat out the second most common answer—retirement— by 15 points. As a result, many local governments a re trying to keep up with the private sector.

• Publication date: April 2023
• Authors: Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene