LOW UNEMPLOYMENT Denton, Dallas, Tarrant and Collin counties have seen lower unemployment rates than in previous years. Because of this, the job market is competitive to employ people. This means employees choose where they want to work, which leaves law enforcement struggling to hire detention officers, according to local officials.
JOB INCREASE The counties have seen an increase in the number of overall jobs. Collin County Dallas County Denton County Tarrant County Key:
2.5M
2,088,756
Key:
Employed Unemployed
1,863,939
2M
DALLAS COUNTY
COLLIN COUNTY
58,044
18,625
1.5M
1,130,578
1,432,852
626,815
608,190
1,374,808
Total
Total
967,575
1M
608,712
420,897
DENTON COUNTY
TARRANT COUNTY
500K
39,932
16,717
363,203
252,665
1,129,345
552,700
535,983
1,089,413
0
Total
Total
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026
Years
SOURCE: WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS FOR NORTH CENTRAL TEXAS/COMMUNITY IMPACT
SOURCE: WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS FOR NORTH CENTRAL TEXAS FALL 2022 DATA/COMMUNITY IMPACT
To combat the shortage, officials have turned to recruiting and finan- cial incentives. Staffing shortages These law enforcement staffing challenges are not limited to North Texas but have been seen statewide, Denton County Judge Andy Eads said. “Denton County is not alone in our challenges here,” he said. “It’s a state- wide and national trend.” Denton’s Sheriff Department has seen a decrease in applications for positions and is now experiencing a 35% staffing level at its jail. Having a fully functioning jail is essential to public safety and the judicial system, Eads said. “You can’t incarcerate people with- out having detention officers,” he
said. These officers are “critical” to the public safety infrastructure, Eads said. The shortage has caused a burden on the jail staff, Eads said, as employ- ees now have to take on more shifts to appropriately man the detention center. Skinner, from Collin County, reit- erated Eads’ point. Staffing presents serious challenges, and it is an issue that he manages on a daily basis, Skin- ner said in an email. “Like other agencies in law enforce- ment, sheriffs across the state and across the nation are facing serious staffing challenges,” he said. “Because many sheriffs provide not only law-enforcement services but also supervise the county jail, a sheriff’s
challenges extend to the corrections field as well.” The Collin County Sheriff’s Office has under 10% of positions open for line-level detention officers and just under 3% of positions open for line- level deputy sheriffs, Skinner said. “Unfortunately, in many sher- iff’s offices across the country, the vacancy rate exceeds 35%,” he said. “By any measure this is a crisis.” Challenges of being short-staffed In December, Dallas County had 120 vacancies in detention areas out of 1,481, Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown said. That staffing level has created chal- lenges, she said. The issue is the jail is regulated by the Texas Commission on Jail
CONTINUED FROM 1
ripple effects of layoffs in Silicon Valley. Skinner also serves as the chair of the Government Affairs Committee for the National Sheriffs’ Association, based in Alexandria, Virginia. The job market is also on the rise, according to the Workforce Solu- tions for North Central Texas data. From 2016 to 2021, jobs increased by 22.4% in Collin County from 420,897 to 515,163. This change outpaced the national growth rate of 1.9% by 20.5 percentage points. In Dallas County, jobs increased by 5.1% during that same time. In Denton County, jobs increased by 21.6%. And in Tarrant County, jobs increased by 7.7%.
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