Overview

For years now, in almost every city in the country, municipal jobs have gone unfilled, overtime has surged, and important public services have been creaking under the pressure. Philadelphia has proved no exception: its staffing vacancy rate rose from 5% in Fiscal Year 2018, to 18% in the third quarter of Fiscal Year 2023.

As noted by The Philadelphia Citizen in February 2023, "... Municipal employees are fleeing city government in droves, outpacing administrations’ capacities to fill vacancies, and leaving residents exposed to gaps in basic service provision."

Just a few months later, in its June 2023 Staffing and Overtime Report, the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority (PICA), noted that Philadelphia's "City Council [has] worked with the administration to include funding for recruitment and retention initiatives in the FY24 budget." In fact, municipal governments all across the country were doing the same, ramping up efforts to find and keep employees and allocating funds to make it happen.

Unfortunately, despite all the new money and resources, progress was uneven and modest. Between March 2023, and March 2024, the number of open positions - as reported by State and Local Governments (excluding education jobs) in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report Job Openings And Labor Turnover – March 2024 - fell by less than 20%, nationally, from about 600,000 to approximately 500,000.

Despite this, our research suggested that Philadelphia was in a strong position to improve its recruitment and retention, improve the perception of the City as an employer of choice, and increase the number of applications from qualified, diverse candidates. We were optimistic that the right strategy could get the right results, even during a time of historically low unemployment and despite private sector wage competition, municipal budget constraints, bureaucratic recruitment processes, and all the other competitive disadvantages we had to contend with.

In fact, all these challenges only served to make our work clear: like discerning consumers who need to be enticed to purchase a product, the talent we wanted had to recognize the value represented by the City, as an employer, in order to consider applying for a position.

Our strategy needed to show people how their personalities, ambitions, and skills overlapped with the operation, aspirations, and culture of the City, by focusing on benefits, impact, and potential more than job features, requirements, and responsibilities. But what people?

Through our research we found that, while more than 70% of the City's workforce was at least 39 years old, more than 46% of the city population was younger than 39. There was a huge, untapped, regional pool of Gen Z and Millennial residents waiting to be called to service in the name of Philadelphia.

Although very diverse, this group shares a strong mission-driven idealism. Gen Z and Millennials are motivated by work that aligns with their values and positively impacts society, and seek employers who demonstrate a commitment to social responsibility, sustainability, diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fact, more than anyone else, these two generations were on the hunt for careers defined by the exact attributes we could speak authentically to.   

So, our campaign would focus on marketing to people, instead of the typical marketing about jobs that so many other places clung to. We launched our campaign on July 9th, 2024.