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 Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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