Going Into 2024 Hurricane Season, FEMA Was Operating At 65% Capacity

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In the aftermath of hurricanes Helene and Milton, FEMA is working tirelessly to hire much-needed emergency response workers for recovery and cleanup efforts. For a limited time, FEMA is offering signing bonuses from $500 to $1,500 for reservist positions, and is openly advertising hundreds of temporary jobs in hard-hit cities throughout the Southeast. Last week, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management gave FEMA special permission to bypass several federal recruitment protocols in order to allow the agency to onboard employees more quickly.

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Earlier this year, a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office anticipated some of the hiring challenges FEMA is now facing. In the March report, the GAO found that FEMA’s workforce has struggled with severe shortages, burnout, and attrition as COVID-19 and increasing extreme weather events put unprecedented demand on the agency’s services. As of 2023, FEMA had just 11,400 employees of the 17,670-person workforce it required – a 35% staffing shortfall. In January, FEMA forecast that it would be facing a Disaster Relief Fund deficit of $6.4 billion by September 2024.

In the last several years, FEMA has been deployed to respond to numerous historic hurricanes, the June 2021 condominium collapse in Surfside, Florida, the February 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, refugee resettlement efforts at the southwest border, as well as dozens of major disaster declarations from COVID-19. The agency’s growing workload has stretched an already slender workforce even thinner, with little relief in sight. And with more than a month left in one of the deadliest hurricane seasons in recent memory, FEMA’s need to close its staffing gap is all the more dire.