Public Pension Funds Recovering From Pandemic-Era Staffing Issues

The National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems, in collaboration with CBIZ Inc., released on Monday the results of its 2024 Public Pension Compensation Survey, highlighting compensation and recruiting trends across 158 public funds, which collectively manage more than $4.5 trillion in assets.

Survey participants represented 18,969 full-time positions and 22.56 million active and retired pension plan participants. The average respondent fund has $8.8 billion in assets under management and employs 33 full-time workers.

Approximately 49.3% of respondents said they had no issues with hiring or retaining talent, a figure that has risen from 38% in the 2022 survey. Many public pension funds, comprised of government employees, often cannot match the pay of other financial institutions, including their first-year analyst programs. Still, these funds reported having less of a hard time recruiting talent than in previous few years.

Approximately 12.3% of respondents said they expect the ability to attract and retain skilled staff will become a problem soon, while 26% say it is starting to become a problem, and 12.3% say it is a significant problem.

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Many funds’ offices are located away from large financial hubs like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, and they therefore often have a hard time convincing high-quality candidates to move to smaller cities. Still, compensation is on the rise for public pension employees; funds that participated in the 2023 survey anticipated 3.6% salary growth in the next year. The actual figure for 2024 has been much larger, at 4.9%.

Total cash compensation for employees of public funds increased 8.3% from last year’s survey. Compensation growth roughly matched the increases in pay for all public sector employees.

“Notably, pension funds are beginning to see relief from ongoing recruitment and retention challenges as they embrace highly desirable benefits and begin to see the effects of the recent surge in public sector wage growth,” a spokesperson for NCPERS said. “The recent increases in public sector wages represent a much-needed correction after lagging behind private sector wage growth in the wake of the pandemic.”

NCPERS invited 608 pension funds to participate in the compensation survey, of which 158 provided valid responses. The survey was conducted between May and July. NCPERS will host a webinar on October 3 to discuss the findings of the survey.