The Brief

Thousands of municipal jobs in the city of L.A. have gone unfilled since the end of the pandemic, with vacancy rates in some departments at double or even triple their pre-pandemic levels.

City officials chalk it up to a number of factors, including a greater number of resignations during COVID and slow hiring practices. The result: Angelenos are frustrated by response times for city services, and city workers are stressed out by higher workloads and, in some instances, mandatory overtime.

“Across the city, we are finding that because of our vacancy rates, we are providing less than the service that we should be providing to our constituents,” said City Councilmember Tim McOsker, who chairs the council’s Personnel, Audits and Hiring Committee.

Some of those vacancy rates are startling. A decade ago, the vacancy rate for city jobs was 10%, excluding the Department of Water and Power, L.A. World Airports, and the Harbor Department. Just before the pandemic, it was 11%.

Today, there is a 17.4% vacancy rate citywide, or 9,786 unfilled positions, according to a September report by L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

It’s even worse in some departments. The Bureau of Street Lighting faces a 32% rate, the Recreation and Parks Department has a 23% rate and the Sanitation Department has a 21% rate. Sanitation alone has more than 800 unfilled jobs.

Mejia’s report called it “a growing crisis that affects every Angeleno’s safety and well-being,” adding that the staffing shortage is “chronic and rampant.”

Mayor Karen Bass admits the vacancy rate is a problem. “You call up and you want something picked up and you wonder why it takes so long — that’s exactly why,” Bass told LAist.

“City services are slower,” she said.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (center) attended a recent L.A. city job fair.

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Frank Stoltze

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LAist

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At Sanitation, spokesperson Elena Stern acknowledged the high vacancy rate but maintained the department is picking up more tonnage of trash in recent years. That’s little consolation for Steve Lomke, who’s tired of the trash accumulating on the streets of his Fairfax District neighborhood.

“It’s just depressing,” he said.

When visitors come from out of town, he likes to walk them from his home a few blocks to CBS Television City.

“They’re appalled by the amount of trash on the sidewalk,” said Lomke, 70, a retired architect. “It’s not good for the morale of the city.”

Behind the numbers 

 Why are vacancy rates so high? COVID is largely to blame, says Dana Brown, who heads the city’s personnel department. More than 2,000 people took early retirement under a city program designed to address a dramatic drop in revenues in 2020, she said.

“That’s how we got behind,” she said. “We are still catching up.”

Like all employers, the city was also affected by the Great Resignation — the pandemic-era phenomenon of young people leaving their jobs and baby boomers retiring.

Brown also said onerous civil service rules make rapid hiring nearly impossible.

Slow testing, interviewing, and vetting processes add to what can be a six-month or more ordeal of hiring somebody new to the city.

“The processes are a little archaic,” Brown said.

Brown also said her own department is struggling with a 12% vacancy rate, slowing hiring.

High vacancy rates can mean a city job is harder

Vacancy rates and their effects vary across departments. With a vacancy rate of 15%, the Housing Department “has said that one of the challenges with enforcing tenant protections is having adequate staff to follow up on the complaints,” said Chief Deputy Controller Rick Cole.

The LAPD’s response time for non-emergency calls can be over an hour as a result of a 16% vacancy rate, according to Chief Michel Moore. “That’s just one result” of having fewer officers, he said.

Some police reform advocates hail a shrinking department, saying police should hand over a lot of duties to unarmed responders anyway.

There are 500 open positions at LAX.

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Kelly Barrie

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Courtesy of Los Angeles World Airports

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LAX has 500 positions open — some alongside Joe Martinez, who works the day shift as a mechanic at a city maintenance facility near the tarmac, fixing airport trucks, buses, and other vehicles.

“It is very stressful for us,” Martinez told LAist during a recent break from work. “We are trying to play catch-up on a daily basis.”

For at least three years now, he and his colleagues have been scrambling to keep up amid a mechanic shortage that plagues the shop. Martinez, 57, said he’s regularly forced to work mandatory overtime because nearly half of LAX mechanic jobs are unfilled.

The airport never closes, and the need for repairs never ceases. “It's kinda like ‘OK, am I going to be home for the holidays. Am I going to have to give up Christmas and Thanksgiving with my family?” Martinez said.

The controller’s report makes note of vacancies leading to “an increase in overtime costs, labor tension, stress and potential increases in worker compensation costs over the long run.”

Possible solutions

The report by the controller makes a series of recommendations, including overhauling the civil service system. That’s unlikely, given it would require changes to the city charter.

The controller also recommends convening a task force of city and union leaders and building on programs like Targeted Local Hiring, which provides people who live in the city a faster track to entry-level jobs.

Brown said her department is working to improve hiring practices. She pointed to a pilot program with the Engineers and Architects Association to allow outside candidates to apply for certain jobs previously open only to current employees.

“That is a huge, huge step in the direction of allowing people to bring their professional talent into the city,” she said.

At the same time, finding a city job online isn’t easy. Not all jobs are listed on the personnel website. You have to go to each individual department’s website to see everything that’s available.

Brown is also finding that her personnel department needs to adjust its recruiting message.

Young jobseekers are as interested in meaningful work as lucrative government pensions.

A personnel official with L.A. County agreed.

“Traditionally we have not had to rely on that message” of government as a social service that helps communities, said Johan Julin, chief of hiring strategies for the county.  “We are realizing that really resonates with the younger generation.”

The county vacancy rate is 14%. It's typically 6 or 7%, according to Julin.

'Confusing' application process

Charles Goldman, a senior economist at the RAND Corporation who co-authored a study on public sector hiring in 2021, said young people found the process of applying for jobs “very confusing.”

“They often were not sure where to go to make an application or to find job listings,” he said. “College and university students have low awareness of the range of opportunities available in the public sector,” his report said.

The city is in part relying on an old solution to address some of these issues — they're holding more job fairs.

At a recent fair in Wilmington, Erin Meyers visited a booth set up by the L.A. Harbor Department. He recently graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from Cal State Long Beach.

Meyers, 26, landed an interview next month, but knows the process for getting hired by the city is “somewhat daunting.” Still, he thinks it's worth it.

“In terms of the work-life balance, it’s preferred,” said Meyers, comparing a city job to one in the private sector. “I would argue that being able to go home at a set time is more important than getting an extra 5K a year.”

His mother, Gina Martinez, is “thrilled.”

“I would love it if he went to work for the city,” she said.

The Japanese American National Museum announced today it will reopen in January after a two-year, $25 million overhaul of the country’s largest museum dedicated to the Japanese American experience.

The museum in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is reshaping its galleries and expanding its signature exhibition to include more perspectives and connections between Japanese American history and current debates over race, immigration and democracy.

The new exhibition at JANM features A.I.-assisted avatars of Japanese American survivors of incarceration.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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“We want to tell the story in a way that is more expansive and that other immigrants, communities can see their own story reflected,” said Ann Burroughs, the museum’s president and CEO.

That effort to tie history to the present comes as JANM itself has faced political pressure, with the museum losing federal funding amid Trump administration cuts.

From the outside, visitors returning to the museum, which has been closed since January 2024, will recognize its modern, minimalist exterior. Once they step through the doors, though, the experience will be vastly different.

The biggest change will be the installation of a 9,200-square-foot permanent exhibition occupying nearly all of the museum’s first floor — more than twice the space of the exhibition it replaces.

"Common Ground," which opened in 1999, covered Japanese American history from migration to the U.S. in the 1800s to the passage of a federal law — the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — that formally apologized for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and provided $20,000 in reparations to surviving detainees.

The new exhibition, called "In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy," will include more recent history, such as Japanese American support for reparations for Black Americans and vocal opposition to the Islamophobia that swelled after 9/11. It will also cover the Japanese American response to ICE detention and incarceration of migrant children, drawing parallels to World War II camps.

Galleries have been reconfigured to include more recent history and more objects from the past, including kimonos owned by women from Japan, who immigrated to the U.S. in larger numbers starting in the turn of the 20th century.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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It will also bring lesser-known perspectives to familiar history through telling the story of incarceration from “women and mothers” and those incarcerated at Tule Lake, the camp in Northern California where Japanese Americans labeled as disloyal by the U.S. government were isolated during World War II.

“JANM hadn’t told that story before,” Burroughs said. “You can’t draw those parallels of what’s happening now if you don’t talk about the camps and if you don’t talk about Tule Lake.”

The new exhibition will also lean more heavily into audiovisual storytelling, using technology and archival media to make the history feel more immediate.

The interactive “StoryFiles” incorporate AI so visitors can pose questions to digital avatars of incarceration survivors like the actor George Takei.

Burroughs stressed that the museum is not using generative AI, but drawing upon hours and hours of interviews in which subjects answered hundreds of questions.

The new exhibition will also draw deeply from JANM’s extensive collection of Japanese American home movies, including footage dating to the 1930s, and give visitors a window into everyday life before World War II.

Some of JANM’s best-known objects will be included in the new exhibition, like barracks from the Heart Mountain incarceration camp in Wyoming and a model of Manzanar in California’s remote Owens Valley, the first of the camps to be built.

The museum is also emphasizing everyday culture, with displays ranging from kimonos brought by Japanese immigrant women at the turn of the 20th century to rice cookers, and the worldwide reach of Hello Kitty.

The Hirasaki National Resource Center has been relocated to the second floor and will showcase work from artists like Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi.

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Courtesy of Japanese American National Museum

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The larger new exhibition was created without growing the museum's footprint through reconfiguring the building. For example, the museum’s Aratani Central Hall will take on a new role as the museum’s main entrance, with visitors entering through its sweeping curved glass wall and moving directly into the exhibition galleries. But Burroughs said the redesign will not come at the expense of the hall’s longtime function as a community space available to local nonprofits.

Upstairs, visitors will find reconfigured spaces including a new reading room filled with works and furnishings by Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi. Behind the scenes, JANM has upgraded decades-old building systems such as its HVAC and elevators.

The museum overhaul was funded as part of a much larger $135 million fundraising campaign, Burroughs said. The rest of the campaign supports JANM’s operations and long-term financial stability, including about $56 million in endowment and board-designated reserves.

"You know, life is never secure in the nonprofit world or in the museum world," Burroughs said. "We have to do a lot more to build up our endowments. We just will keep going."

Public health officials are urging people to be wary of flea-borne typhus after a recent outbreak of the illness.

The outbreak in late July was centered in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Public Health said five people were hospitalized; all recovered.

The outbreak comes as typhus cases continue to tick up in L.A. County.

Cases have been increasing fairly steadily for more than a decade, but they nearly doubled over the last three years. The Public Health Department logged a record 220 cases in 2025, and officials say this year is on track to exceed that.

Public health officials say the increase is likely because human-animal interactions are also increasing. That could be due to human population expansions into areas with more animals, available food sources for wildlife in populated areas or more people owning pets.

The bacteria that causes typhus is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas.

Typhus can’t be passed from one human to another, and public health experts say the illness is completely treatable, especially if it’s caught early.

Outbreaks and how to prevent them

Most of the time, typhus cases are spread out across L.A. County. But sometimes, there’s a localized spread over a short period of time that turns into an outbreak.

Public health officials respond to a few of them in L.A. County each year.

Generally, outbreaks are triggered by high concentrations of host animals.

“Wherever these animals may be present or wherever they may be congregating, in those areas we can see an increase in the number of human infections,” said Dr. Aiman Halai with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

The most common hosts for typhus are rats, opossums and free-roaming cats. When people or pets come in contact with host animals, they can pick up the infected fleas and bring them into homes, spreading them to other people and animals in the process.

Halai says a variety of factors can attract animals and lead to an outbreak, including overflowing dumpsters, overgrown vegetation or a well-meaning neighbor feeding local critters.

You can help prevent outbreaks by securing trash in bins, making sure food isn’t left outside, and ensuring pets are on up-to-date flea control medication. Cutting back overgrown vegetation and blocking off crawl spaces can eliminate places where animals can shelter in and around homes.

Halai also says it’s important not to feed wildlife.

Should you be worried?

Although public health experts are wary of the typhus uptick in L.A. County, the 220 cases recorded in 2025 in L.A. County are not overly concerning.

"That’s a very  low rate at the population level,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Typhus is an acute infection caused by bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi. Variations of the bacteria also cause other illnesses transmitted by fleas, ticks, lice and mites, including tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Doctors can test for typhus fairly easily, and it is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms are similar to the flu, and can include fever, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. It can also cause rashes in some cases.

Most infections are mild, but they can cause hospitalization and, in rare cases, can be fatal.

Klausner said the concern is that testing for typhus is not always routine.

“The most important thing is that when patients come in to their doctor — and they have fever, they may have a rash, they may have headache, may have muscle or joint aches — that the doctor's thinking about potentially flea-borne infectious diseases because the treatment can be different,” Klausner said.

The best treatment for typhus is the antibiotic doxycycline. If a patient with typhus gets another type of antibiotic like penicillin or amoxicillin, the treatment may not be as successful.

According to Klausner, when presented with flu-like symptoms, it’s also a good idea for patients to tell their doctors if they’ve been around animals, spent time in an encampment or even just gone on a hike.

Topline:

Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.

What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.

Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.

What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”

What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.