About one in six California Highway Patrol positions are vacant, a rate much higher than in 2019, despite massive raises in the last two years.
The jobs are unfilled at a sensitive time for Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose administration earlier this month agreed to a new contract with the union that represents CHP officers. The deal is expected to cost $489 million over the next three years through a combination of raises and enhanced pay incentives.
Newsom has been deploying CHP officers to combat local crime challenges in Oakland and other cities. He’s also been promoting a recruiting campaign called CHP 1000 that he launched in 2022 to hire hundreds of new officers.
CHP officers got a 7.9% wage increase in 2023, marking their biggest raise in 20 years. In 2022, they received a 6.2% general salary increase. Both are historically high raises for the officers.
Rookie CHP officers today can expect to earn up to $117,000 in the first year on duty, according to the agency.
For reasons the Legislative Analyst’s Office couldn’t explain in a report released last week, the CHP officer vacancy rate skyrocketed by 94% between 2015-2023. In 2019, just 5% of CHP positions were unfilled. Today, the vacancy rate exceeds 16%, although the CHP has said it received far more applications to its academy in the first half of this year than than in the same period in 2023.
Part of the problem, the analyst’s office report contends, is that the CHP doesn’t face any consequences for failing to make new hires.
“The current formula does not contain any factor that adjusts pay increases based on the success or failure of CHP to actually recruit and retain employees,” according to the report.
Raises for CHP officers by state law are based on the average compensation at five…
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