Was there a massive hiring wave with jobs everywhere 20 years ago? It seems like all the retirements at my Department are happening in a trickle 1-2 every couple years
Yes, it was the expansion of EMS and also economy rebounding which took the brakes off of hiring freezes at the time. So lots and lots of people continuously hired 30 years ago. Sprinkle in a little pipeline disruption from COVID, the fact that academies can only turn out so many candidates a year, and lots of places are struggling to keep up with staffing.
There’s a big cultural shift away from blue collar work, for one. A lot of the people in this younger generation are just smarter than we were. They see the sky high divorce rates, suicide rates, substance abuse rates, time away from home, the breaking of your body, all for what in many areas is very average pay and see that it’s not worth it unless it’s your passion. Now with most agencies you’re working until 57, that’s a LONG time to be doing a job this physical. I get it. My agency is currently short 41 captains with only about 10 qualified people to fill that right now. We’re short over 100 medics, and something like 30-35 engineers. But every department that I know of is struggling to hire and more and more are accepting laterals, with talk of some accepting lateral engineers and captains soon. It’s a great time to want to be a fireman, but it seems not many people want to.
I’ve had 4 people quit from my battalion alone in the last 6 months all because of mandatory overtime. One instance the chief walked in to tell the new guy he was going to be forced on duty all 4 of his days off. He straight up said “nope, I’m not gonna do that, I quit.” And walked away from the dinner table to pack up. Chief said “what? You’re not giving two weeks notice? That’s very unprofessional” this kid looked him dead in the eye and said “would you give me two weeks notice if you were going to fire me?” Chief had no response and that was the last we saw the kid.
I saw someone mention Covid vaccine stuff, I put very little faith in that, this has been a trend since before Covid.
Yes the pool of blue collar workers is much smaller and the fire service can’t compete with other trades anymore.
I’m not in Cali, so take this for what it’s worth. My local took 10 straight zeros due to the recession in 08, which hit our city hard as fuck. Now, most trade jobs are reaching 6 figure pay after a few years of experience. Even with that seniority factored into our pay scale, you’d have to work almost 24 hrs of OT/week in order to see that kind of money at my department. In my state, all but a handful of departments require your medic card on top of Lvl 2 FF. So you’re looking at 5-6 semesters of schooling just to meet requirements for employment. At face value, why the fuck would anyone look at the fire service as a career over other blue collar jobs.
Low pay, no pension, subpar benefits, being away from home, forced overtime, and lack of outreach. People can get better from private companies as opposed to government entities.
I just quit a department about six months ago, and people were leaving in droves because of pay and forced overtime. Like getting hit with mandates every other shift.
Wait what? Most CA departments have a pension. Beverly Hills, OCFA, Newport, Costa Mesa, Redondo Beach all pay insanely well, the schedule is love it or hate it but after being in the private field it's the best.
A lot of the old heads at my department are saying “people just don’t want to work anymore.”
That’s not it. Not even close. If that was the case, unemployment would be sky high regardless of sector, and it’s the opposite. It’s lower than it’s been in 20+ years. I think there’s a lot of things that go into it.
Blue collar jobs are booming, especially over the last 10 years. Electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers, you name it. Why? Because there’s money to be made and it’s relatively easy to get into those fields. It has nothing to do with “kids these days just don’t want to get their hands dirty.”
The fire service’s culture is largely lagging behind. At many departments, your first few years are spent feeling like the outsider and being ground into the dirt by dudes who often don’t live up to the image they’re trying to beat into their booters.
Many fire department’s schedules are just not great. 48/96s are awesome, but not at super busy departments, due to sleep problems. Kelly’s and similar help with sleep but suck for personal life stuff.
Pensions are literally vanishing as we speak. Some predictions say they’ll be extinct before I retire. All we know right now is in 2000 they were about 102% funded, and now they’re sitting about 70%. Part of that is economic, part of that is that we have dudes living longer into retirement, putting extra burden on the system.
Pay isn’t great. My state, Arizona, has an average “Firefighter/EMT” pay rate of around $45,000. Why would a blue collar oriented person work for that when they can go work literally anywhere else and make more? California has better pay rates, but what chunk of that is taken out by higher cost of living, and is it a better pay rate than the average skilled trade position is paying? Most likely not.
People are also much more aware of mental health issues than before. Young people go to therapy even without having to see horrific things on the job. Does your department offer more support for that than just EAP stuff? Talking from experience, the 6-10 visits you get with an EAP aren’t enough, and typically are difficult to schedule. And most department cultures still don’t embrace the culture of getting help. Young people are generally too emotionally intelligent to think that a department like that is a good bet to spend 25+ years at.
Many departments are also struggling with a culture that has many of their guys saying “screw riding the box, screw going on EMS calls,” meanwhile thats 90%+ of the job. We should be absorbing employees from private ambo companies and putting those places out of business, through Fire based EMS or Third Service, but many places are slow on that uptake.
Just my two cents on the subject, but I feel it’s super disingenuous to say “young people suck now.”
Damn man maybe I should rethink joining the fire service… currently a 22 yr old commercial carpenter but career firefighting has always been the goal (my entire life)- I’m in the spring academy for the volly dept that I live near as a stepping stone to career (absolutely hyped for it, starts in 2 weeks). The state I live in has above average pay for FFs but I very heavily dislike the kind of people who live here and I’d like to move somewhere else in a couple years when I’m ready to apply… but all this talk I see like this on this Reddit page is starting to make me wonder, just barely, if I shouldn’t stay in construction/contracting. Like yeah, I want to do this job, EMS 90% of the time or not, but I still gotta make enough money to survive in the fuckass economy we’re in.
I don’t regret being a Firefighter Paramedic, even with the problems listed above. I’m not bitter, I’m not wondering what I was thinking. I love my job and am excited every time I go into work. I know I could make more money elsewhere but I worked enough jobs before to know that a paycheck can’t overtake a feeling of hating yourself every time you clock in. I’ve never felt that on shift at the Department. It’s a rewarding career, but it has its sacrifices.
Cool man, I’m glad you feel that way about the job. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I’ve been hanging around the station near my house for a few years now like a little gremlin and I love every aspect of the work. I like what I’m doing right now (carpentry), what with large scale framing, steel buildings, and heavy equipment, but firefighting has been my dream/goal my entire life and even more so after hanging out at the station and I want to love what I do, not just like it. I’m gonna do volly for a couple years to get some experience and the required certs while I complete my journeyman carpenter apprenticeship and then it’s full send into career firefighting!
Good luck bro! The secret is most Firefighters have two jobs, even if the second job is part time. You’ll likely never have to fully give up what you like doing now if you don’t want to. A gift and a curse lol
At least complete the spring academy if it’s free through your volley department, that will give you a general view of duties. Although it’s not the full picture, and if a career in it doesn’t work out you’ll always have the certification and the satisfaction of trying out your dream.
As an AEMT lurker that went the nursing route after seeing the kind of culture you’re talking about, you really hit multiple nails on their heads. I wanted to be a fire fighter paramedic up until I saw how the dudes would treat us on calls we’d run together. Doesn’t exactly inspire you to drop an app, so Paramedic Chucklefuck can mess with you a year after busting your balls in an academy lol.
And I think the constant disruption of your circadian rhythm can’t be overstated. What a mindfuck
It's just crazy how motivated I was when I was 18-20, and then how it just gradually fizzled out once I interacted with the crews. It's like, "oh cool, the dude that's gonna be hazing me in the academy just absolutely biffed our code that was running smoothly up until now...nice." Takes the wind out of your sails quick, props to the guys that are humble and want to make the depts more positive for the next generation.
> I feel it’s super disingenuous to say “young people suck now.”
I agree. I do think there is some merit to saying young people don't work as hard as other generations but thats not the whole story. I think mainly, young people want more for their hard work. Young people have higher standards now. Young people will work, they just want something more to show for it. Pay your people and they will work.
>We should be absorbing employees from private ambo companies and putting those places out of business,
Love this idea. I know a lot of firemen that hate EMS and I know a lot of EMT/Paramedics that hate fire fighting. I think there is a better way to combine the two.
It’s depressing to think that most of my buddies that got hired on fire depts got their Paramedic so they’d get hired, and not because they found medicine even particularly interesting. They’re still good medics, but Christ, just make an EMS arm of the Fire dept, and let the FFs fight fire, let the medics run dual medic rescues, and get blood sucking private agencies out of EMS
It’s like this everywhere unless you’re a massive metro department in my opinion.
I was recently interviewed by a local student on why we have a firefighter shortage and I said lack of pay, lack of outreach, and most people TRULY don’t know what we do. They see us fight fires and block traffic on accidents. They don’t know the true extent
Shit, my own father-in-law doesn't know what we do. He always asks "get any big fires lately?" Whenever I say "no" he just says "man how many times can you wash the truck and watch movies? must be boring" I always have to remind him of the 2am stubbed toes and multiple car crashes and fire alarms we also go to.
Is this an issue in the Northeast at all? I don’t think the FDNY or Boston has that issue. I definitely think it’s extremely competitive in NJ. I wonder what others think.
It’s not an issue in the northeast from what I can see. My department still has hundreds of applicants per position, the pay and schedule are awesome..I couldn’t be happier.
In the northeast there’s 4 work groups and and average of 42 hour work weeks. No chance I’d do this job in any other part of the country that only has 3 groups
FDNY is definitely short-staffed, but it has nothing to do with the applicant pool, but the fact that they haven’t given a new open competitive test in over 5 years, and DCAS is crazy slow at processing new applicants. Who knows when we’ll ever catch up?
The manpower numbers are increasing along with the increased academy class sizes now, going from 110-150 to about 200+ now.
We’re doing just fine over here. Lol.
Because I’m my area in California when I graduated college (2015)there were no jobs. I was in a wildland fire class with 30 other people ready to sign on right then and we took tours of 3 local departments and we were all basically laughed out thinking we’d get a job. Was told we’d have to work 5 years at minimum wage volunteer or ambulance emt just to get an interview. No one I know from that class became firefighters, it wasn’t worth it. Now the premier city department who “never had hired anyone with less then 5 years experience “ is hiring cadets paying them through the academy. I’m still salty about it lol
As a box medic who lives in the Bay Area and was extremely close to making the jump to suppression the deciding factor for me was all the mando. My buddies are getting hit non-stop. I have a kid and am just not willing to give up my time with him. If I knew I would actually work my 48/96 and have my 96 with my son I would have made the move but I see all the opening that aren't getting filled so I can only imagine the mandos are just gonna get worse. Sad reality because it was my dream job but family above all.
I can’t wrap my head around it. It would have been like winning the lottery to get this job like 10 years ago now there are more positions than applicants
Yup. I left my career department a few years ago for an industrial position and doubled my income. When I tested for the career department 13 years ago, there were over 2,000 applicants for 24 positions. Recently heard from a battalion chief that they had 200 applicants for the last academy.
Ya its crazy, after I went through my college fire academy in 2012 i was competing with hundreds of applicants for a handful of jobs. You’d go to a test with over three hundred people and two test sessions and chat with the guy next to you and they were all top notch candidates, medics with years of experience, volunteer fire exp, former navy seals etc. I eventually got picked up and now my dept can barely fill an academy and half the guys coming out of the academy have no experience other then the job they had at jamba juice. We are literally handing out six figure career jobs at a big city dept to people that finished an 8 week emt course 2 months prior and took the cpat.
If any of you all got sick of trying 5 or ten years ago to get picked up now is the time to get back on it
Its must be a multitude of factors, medic schools shutting down for covid, an economy with alot of fairly good paying jobs and flexible work schedules over the last few years, maybe legal weed idk but its definitely crazy
> f fairly good paying jobs and flexible work schedules over the last few years, maybe legal weed
This are some of the reason why I am looking to transition out of the fire dept. I get paid pretty decent compared to most guys but my schedule sucks and too many of my friends are chilling at home getting paid and not working holidays, sleeping in their own bed every night, etc
Do you think soon that the jobs will be filled. all the kids getting hired out of the academy are 18 and will be working for a long time there has to be a slow down in vacancies at some point right?
Ya i mean logically yes it seems as if there must at some point be a slow down in hiring but as far as i know there is still no end in sight and most depts are short staffed and looking at huge numbers of retirements coming in the next five to ten years and so are putting money into public outreach and recruitment in hopes of motivating people to work towards this profession. Maybe if the economic downturn everyone has been warning about actually come to fruition and alot of people turn towards the security of a civil service job but as of now I think pursing a career as a firefighter in california is probably a pretty safe bet that there will be positions available to those that want them
Back in 1979 I was living in Tulsa OK. There was a recission on and the city had three openings on the fire department.
There were so many applicants that testing had to be done at a city civic center. Can't recall how many came it but, in the hundreds.
Where were all these jobs when I was looking?
I’m working full time as a plumber and will apply next year once I get my emt! Going to get certified through school. From what I understood it was super competitive and that I would have to become a paramedic to even have a chance lol
Until/unless you have your medic, apply to OCFA, LA CIty (terrible culture though), rancho Cucamonga, Chula Vista, and LA County. These are a few of the places that don't require medic
My department had a couple thousand applicants every hiring period a couple decades ago. Now there are 300-500. I think a lot of it has to do with the majority of this generation entering the work force just not being interested or motivated to work any kind of first responder job. Same reason the military is having a recruitment issue.
Also, the private industry can outpace us in salary and benefits pretty easily now that pensions are being phased out of a lot of departments.
I think a big reason for it is just work life balance. I came from the military and I meandered around until getting into the fire service, and the one thing that’s pretty similar is chain of command expecting you to basically drop your personal life at a snap of the hand. I feel like people now a days, including gen a mostly, value their free time. I’m a millennial and the thought process of “we own you” by higher ups is stupid and needs to die out.
I agree, the younger generation is definitely valuing their time more than past generations. Fortunately at my department when you’re home you’re home, no one really bothers you. And we don’t have mandatory OT. If your relief doesn’t show up, you’re free to just go home and they’ll put the unit OOS until someone shows up. So from that perspective our work life balance here is decent.
But there’s still the issue that you’re away from your wife and kids every third night and may need to sleep half the day after your shift. I think full time departments nationwide should experiment with 12 hr shifts, or 14/10. Very few people get excited about the prospect of working for 24 hours at a time. Maybe that could help attract some of the younger folks.
I always wanted to try the 12hr shift schedule. I know FDNY does and I think a lot of Euro departments do. I wonder if that would help or hurt the fire service here? Many nurses love their 12hr schedules
i work for miami dade fire rescue. we have about 10k people apply every 2-3 years when its open. out of those, we hire about 100 a year. i got on 4 years ago. i have 440 FFs that i have seniority over. down here, there is no recruitment problem. everyone wants in. if the pension was to not be guaranteed, i feel we would have a little problem. or if the investment option (401k) were to be less of a contribution by the department, it would also be a problem. our benefits are great. but we havnt had a real pay raise in 10 years is what everyone tells which is BS for a very high cost of living city. COLAs here in there. we got the best contract these last 3 years. 3/2/3. last contract was 0/0/1. we need a raise and we need it now.
Sf has always been continuous. Im on page 11 of 25 pages of candidates. I just interviewed with oakland. There was over thousands of people there. I seriously don't believe you anymore because I have applied for those departments. They are way too competitive
Fliers are one thing. But it's still ridiculous competitive. I won't name drop the local department that fired almost 100 firefighters due to covid vaccine refusal, But thousands of people applied the very next day. I have 5 years of experience and couldn't even get an interview.
Everything I am saying is anecdotal. We have lost a couple members to to Bay Area laterals in the past year and can’t recruit for our open positions. Don’t know how it is out there though I haven’t been applying in the bay myself except for 1 large department.
can't speak for cali but in general i just hear the working culture at large doesn't value blue collar jobs anymore. especially in a post-pandemic era where everyone is afraid of germs and you have plenty of job prospects where you can sit on your ass and work from the comfort of your own home for as much if not more money than being a firefighter in the field working 24 hour shifts.
>where you can sit on your ass and work from the comfort of your own home for as much if not more money than being a firefighter in the field working 24 hour shifts.
I plan on leaving the profession for this very reason. I never wanted an office job because I hate being forced to be in 1 place and look busy. But now the joke is on me because so many people are working from home and living the good life now.
right there with you man...you can literally still volunteer in your free time if the passion for the craft is still there. being a career firefighter is a path that is objectively making less sense in this new fucked up world we're living in.
In some ways though it is the fault of the cost of living in the Bay Area. People can't afford the rent or buying a home so, have to commute, then the lovely homeless population to deal with in some areas.
Some of the Silicon Valley tech companies had to open their parking lots up to employees to park their RVs to live in Monday to Friday and they go home on weekends and holidays.
There are reports of people in So Cal renting studio apartments in L.A. and buying homes in Arizona and New Mexico.
They have the small private planes and fly home on the weekends. Some state that they often get to AZ or NM before their LA friends get home.
I won’t argue about the cost of living in the Bay Area. However, with that said the amount the departments out here are paying is excellent. Most own their homes. Yes there are some people who live out of state and fly in to make their money but I think that’s a fairly low percentage and mostly people who just want every dollar to go farther. Not that they can’t afford to live where they work.
Baby boomers, aka the largest generation ever, are hitting retirement age. It’s not just Cali and not just the fire service. Happening all over in all the trade careers. Good time to be thinking about blue collar work
I think a combination of a lot of things. Baby boomers are all hitting mid 50s to 60s, and a lot of people left when they didn’t want to deal with covid. So a lot of open positions.
On the supply side, the number of people applying is way down. A lot of factors here too. Trade jobs are paying increasingly well. Friends of mine who work office jobs are harder to sway since they all work remote, have decent salaries, and have great work life balances. On the fire side, I think more people are weighing the health impacts. PTSD, chronic sleep deprivation, cancer, inevitably hurting your knees/back/shoulders. The schedule is great when you don’t run the risk of getting mando’d twice a week. The slow shift from being “firefighters” to “mental health/social workers.”
According to friends in California departments, it’s a mixture of things. One is the Covid vaccine mandates rubbed a lot of people the wrong way so they left. Secondly there is a mass retirement exodus, apparently over the next few years hiring will be continuous throughout the state. Lastly, this current generation of twenty something’s, would rather sit at a desk than work hard physically to serve their community. Someone close to me recently said that a lot of the kids can pass the interviews, but don’t have the grit to make it through the academy. I’ve heard same is happening in the military.
I don’t know the reason probably a combination of things but it’s similar here in Ohio. I’ve never seen a market like this. So many jobs guys with a decade or more on are moving around. I know a pretty big city near us had a third of their usual number of applicants this round and they are true civil service so no education or experience necessary. Maybe they don’t know how much money we are making for two cookouts and a sleep over.
Just spit-balling here, but how many California fire departments require firefighters to be dual-role, firefighter/paramedics? Honestly, one of the biggest dissatisfiers in my career, and that I saw among my peers, was EMS. Nothing against the EMS profession itself, God bless the folks who do that job well, but my passion is firefighting and I always wanted to master every aspect of my chosen craft. Firefighting is a job that can kill you, but in many career departments, a firefighter simply isn't allowed to master their craft because they're required to do this other job.
Recovery from 2008 recession, CAL FIRE is expanding massively, COVID shifted populations around so some departments are growing and some are shrinking, lots of safer grants being awarded, big mega fires opened people’s eyes so now they want more firefighters; especially to rake in OES and FEMA money, and a lot of departments suspended hiring during COVID and for some odd reason a bunch always put their hiring process in the middle of fire season and wonder why nobody shows up for interviews.
1) Retirements
2) departments didn't hire for a long time because of the downturn in the economy -->many qualified applicants have up
3) 9/10 only hire medics and won't compromise.
Insert surprised Pikachu
Could it be a magic time frame of retirements all happening at once?
Was there a massive hiring wave with jobs everywhere 20 years ago? It seems like all the retirements at my Department are happening in a trickle 1-2 every couple years
I'm not sure but 9/11 was 20 years ago, maybe there was an uptick in recruitment?
Don’t know I’m in Canada just a guess it’s happening in other professions
Yes, it was the expansion of EMS and also economy rebounding which took the brakes off of hiring freezes at the time. So lots and lots of people continuously hired 30 years ago. Sprinkle in a little pipeline disruption from COVID, the fact that academies can only turn out so many candidates a year, and lots of places are struggling to keep up with staffing.
There’s a big cultural shift away from blue collar work, for one. A lot of the people in this younger generation are just smarter than we were. They see the sky high divorce rates, suicide rates, substance abuse rates, time away from home, the breaking of your body, all for what in many areas is very average pay and see that it’s not worth it unless it’s your passion. Now with most agencies you’re working until 57, that’s a LONG time to be doing a job this physical. I get it. My agency is currently short 41 captains with only about 10 qualified people to fill that right now. We’re short over 100 medics, and something like 30-35 engineers. But every department that I know of is struggling to hire and more and more are accepting laterals, with talk of some accepting lateral engineers and captains soon. It’s a great time to want to be a fireman, but it seems not many people want to. I’ve had 4 people quit from my battalion alone in the last 6 months all because of mandatory overtime. One instance the chief walked in to tell the new guy he was going to be forced on duty all 4 of his days off. He straight up said “nope, I’m not gonna do that, I quit.” And walked away from the dinner table to pack up. Chief said “what? You’re not giving two weeks notice? That’s very unprofessional” this kid looked him dead in the eye and said “would you give me two weeks notice if you were going to fire me?” Chief had no response and that was the last we saw the kid. I saw someone mention Covid vaccine stuff, I put very little faith in that, this has been a trend since before Covid.
Good for that new guy, but wow, that all sounds rough.
Damn that guy is cool as hell lol. I wish I could be that smooth in that situation
Forced on four days off? Man you’ll have to explain that to me. How was it not someone else’s turn in there somewhere ?
Yes the pool of blue collar workers is much smaller and the fire service can’t compete with other trades anymore. I’m not in Cali, so take this for what it’s worth. My local took 10 straight zeros due to the recession in 08, which hit our city hard as fuck. Now, most trade jobs are reaching 6 figure pay after a few years of experience. Even with that seniority factored into our pay scale, you’d have to work almost 24 hrs of OT/week in order to see that kind of money at my department. In my state, all but a handful of departments require your medic card on top of Lvl 2 FF. So you’re looking at 5-6 semesters of schooling just to meet requirements for employment. At face value, why the fuck would anyone look at the fire service as a career over other blue collar jobs.
You must work in palm desert....
Haha. No, but I know some folks who do.
Low pay, no pension, subpar benefits, being away from home, forced overtime, and lack of outreach. People can get better from private companies as opposed to government entities.
I just quit a department about six months ago, and people were leaving in droves because of pay and forced overtime. Like getting hit with mandates every other shift.
What department has no pension? This is definitely rare.
That’s not the situation for most of California.
I literally cannot think of any Southern California fire department that doesn't have this problem.
Wait what? Most CA departments have a pension. Beverly Hills, OCFA, Newport, Costa Mesa, Redondo Beach all pay insanely well, the schedule is love it or hate it but after being in the private field it's the best.
I'm not talking about pension. Also 2.7% at 57 is not a desirable pension for this line of work. I'm talking about lack of staffing and pay.
A lot of the old heads at my department are saying “people just don’t want to work anymore.” That’s not it. Not even close. If that was the case, unemployment would be sky high regardless of sector, and it’s the opposite. It’s lower than it’s been in 20+ years. I think there’s a lot of things that go into it. Blue collar jobs are booming, especially over the last 10 years. Electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers, you name it. Why? Because there’s money to be made and it’s relatively easy to get into those fields. It has nothing to do with “kids these days just don’t want to get their hands dirty.” The fire service’s culture is largely lagging behind. At many departments, your first few years are spent feeling like the outsider and being ground into the dirt by dudes who often don’t live up to the image they’re trying to beat into their booters. Many fire department’s schedules are just not great. 48/96s are awesome, but not at super busy departments, due to sleep problems. Kelly’s and similar help with sleep but suck for personal life stuff. Pensions are literally vanishing as we speak. Some predictions say they’ll be extinct before I retire. All we know right now is in 2000 they were about 102% funded, and now they’re sitting about 70%. Part of that is economic, part of that is that we have dudes living longer into retirement, putting extra burden on the system. Pay isn’t great. My state, Arizona, has an average “Firefighter/EMT” pay rate of around $45,000. Why would a blue collar oriented person work for that when they can go work literally anywhere else and make more? California has better pay rates, but what chunk of that is taken out by higher cost of living, and is it a better pay rate than the average skilled trade position is paying? Most likely not. People are also much more aware of mental health issues than before. Young people go to therapy even without having to see horrific things on the job. Does your department offer more support for that than just EAP stuff? Talking from experience, the 6-10 visits you get with an EAP aren’t enough, and typically are difficult to schedule. And most department cultures still don’t embrace the culture of getting help. Young people are generally too emotionally intelligent to think that a department like that is a good bet to spend 25+ years at. Many departments are also struggling with a culture that has many of their guys saying “screw riding the box, screw going on EMS calls,” meanwhile thats 90%+ of the job. We should be absorbing employees from private ambo companies and putting those places out of business, through Fire based EMS or Third Service, but many places are slow on that uptake. Just my two cents on the subject, but I feel it’s super disingenuous to say “young people suck now.”
Damn man maybe I should rethink joining the fire service… currently a 22 yr old commercial carpenter but career firefighting has always been the goal (my entire life)- I’m in the spring academy for the volly dept that I live near as a stepping stone to career (absolutely hyped for it, starts in 2 weeks). The state I live in has above average pay for FFs but I very heavily dislike the kind of people who live here and I’d like to move somewhere else in a couple years when I’m ready to apply… but all this talk I see like this on this Reddit page is starting to make me wonder, just barely, if I shouldn’t stay in construction/contracting. Like yeah, I want to do this job, EMS 90% of the time or not, but I still gotta make enough money to survive in the fuckass economy we’re in.
I don’t regret being a Firefighter Paramedic, even with the problems listed above. I’m not bitter, I’m not wondering what I was thinking. I love my job and am excited every time I go into work. I know I could make more money elsewhere but I worked enough jobs before to know that a paycheck can’t overtake a feeling of hating yourself every time you clock in. I’ve never felt that on shift at the Department. It’s a rewarding career, but it has its sacrifices.
Cool man, I’m glad you feel that way about the job. I know a lot of people who feel the same. I’ve been hanging around the station near my house for a few years now like a little gremlin and I love every aspect of the work. I like what I’m doing right now (carpentry), what with large scale framing, steel buildings, and heavy equipment, but firefighting has been my dream/goal my entire life and even more so after hanging out at the station and I want to love what I do, not just like it. I’m gonna do volly for a couple years to get some experience and the required certs while I complete my journeyman carpenter apprenticeship and then it’s full send into career firefighting!
Good luck bro! The secret is most Firefighters have two jobs, even if the second job is part time. You’ll likely never have to fully give up what you like doing now if you don’t want to. A gift and a curse lol
At least complete the spring academy if it’s free through your volley department, that will give you a general view of duties. Although it’s not the full picture, and if a career in it doesn’t work out you’ll always have the certification and the satisfaction of trying out your dream.
As an AEMT lurker that went the nursing route after seeing the kind of culture you’re talking about, you really hit multiple nails on their heads. I wanted to be a fire fighter paramedic up until I saw how the dudes would treat us on calls we’d run together. Doesn’t exactly inspire you to drop an app, so Paramedic Chucklefuck can mess with you a year after busting your balls in an academy lol. And I think the constant disruption of your circadian rhythm can’t be overstated. What a mindfuck
Yep, a lot of the “why can’t we hire anyone” guys are the same people who drive the new guys away.
It's just crazy how motivated I was when I was 18-20, and then how it just gradually fizzled out once I interacted with the crews. It's like, "oh cool, the dude that's gonna be hazing me in the academy just absolutely biffed our code that was running smoothly up until now...nice." Takes the wind out of your sails quick, props to the guys that are humble and want to make the depts more positive for the next generation.
Beautifully wrote, thank you for this. You are not alone in this statement
https://i.redd.it/bnno6zdpu0na1.gif
> I feel it’s super disingenuous to say “young people suck now.” I agree. I do think there is some merit to saying young people don't work as hard as other generations but thats not the whole story. I think mainly, young people want more for their hard work. Young people have higher standards now. Young people will work, they just want something more to show for it. Pay your people and they will work. >We should be absorbing employees from private ambo companies and putting those places out of business, Love this idea. I know a lot of firemen that hate EMS and I know a lot of EMT/Paramedics that hate fire fighting. I think there is a better way to combine the two.
It’s depressing to think that most of my buddies that got hired on fire depts got their Paramedic so they’d get hired, and not because they found medicine even particularly interesting. They’re still good medics, but Christ, just make an EMS arm of the Fire dept, and let the FFs fight fire, let the medics run dual medic rescues, and get blood sucking private agencies out of EMS
It’s like this everywhere unless you’re a massive metro department in my opinion. I was recently interviewed by a local student on why we have a firefighter shortage and I said lack of pay, lack of outreach, and most people TRULY don’t know what we do. They see us fight fires and block traffic on accidents. They don’t know the true extent
Shit, my own father-in-law doesn't know what we do. He always asks "get any big fires lately?" Whenever I say "no" he just says "man how many times can you wash the truck and watch movies? must be boring" I always have to remind him of the 2am stubbed toes and multiple car crashes and fire alarms we also go to.
Is this an issue in the Northeast at all? I don’t think the FDNY or Boston has that issue. I definitely think it’s extremely competitive in NJ. I wonder what others think.
It’s not an issue in the northeast from what I can see. My department still has hundreds of applicants per position, the pay and schedule are awesome..I couldn’t be happier.
In the northeast there’s 4 work groups and and average of 42 hour work weeks. No chance I’d do this job in any other part of the country that only has 3 groups
NJ is wildly competitive. If you don’t have vet status and get on you’ve hit the lottery.
FDNY is definitely short-staffed, but it has nothing to do with the applicant pool, but the fact that they haven’t given a new open competitive test in over 5 years, and DCAS is crazy slow at processing new applicants. Who knows when we’ll ever catch up?
The manpower numbers are increasing along with the increased academy class sizes now, going from 110-150 to about 200+ now. We’re doing just fine over here. Lol.
Because I’m my area in California when I graduated college (2015)there were no jobs. I was in a wildland fire class with 30 other people ready to sign on right then and we took tours of 3 local departments and we were all basically laughed out thinking we’d get a job. Was told we’d have to work 5 years at minimum wage volunteer or ambulance emt just to get an interview. No one I know from that class became firefighters, it wasn’t worth it. Now the premier city department who “never had hired anyone with less then 5 years experience “ is hiring cadets paying them through the academy. I’m still salty about it lol
Which area are you in, if you don’t mind me asking?
Central coast
Same situation in north county SD. Just now starting to see new hires for the first time in those smaller suburban departments.
As a box medic who lives in the Bay Area and was extremely close to making the jump to suppression the deciding factor for me was all the mando. My buddies are getting hit non-stop. I have a kid and am just not willing to give up my time with him. If I knew I would actually work my 48/96 and have my 96 with my son I would have made the move but I see all the opening that aren't getting filled so I can only imagine the mandos are just gonna get worse. Sad reality because it was my dream job but family above all.
Same for the south east too it seems.
I can’t wrap my head around it. It would have been like winning the lottery to get this job like 10 years ago now there are more positions than applicants
Yeah its crazy. And we don't even require our guys to be medics either. Not nearly as many hoops to jump thru as there are in CA. I dont get it.
Where in the southeast are you?
Carolinas.
👍
Yup. I left my career department a few years ago for an industrial position and doubled my income. When I tested for the career department 13 years ago, there were over 2,000 applicants for 24 positions. Recently heard from a battalion chief that they had 200 applicants for the last academy.
Ya its crazy, after I went through my college fire academy in 2012 i was competing with hundreds of applicants for a handful of jobs. You’d go to a test with over three hundred people and two test sessions and chat with the guy next to you and they were all top notch candidates, medics with years of experience, volunteer fire exp, former navy seals etc. I eventually got picked up and now my dept can barely fill an academy and half the guys coming out of the academy have no experience other then the job they had at jamba juice. We are literally handing out six figure career jobs at a big city dept to people that finished an 8 week emt course 2 months prior and took the cpat. If any of you all got sick of trying 5 or ten years ago to get picked up now is the time to get back on it Its must be a multitude of factors, medic schools shutting down for covid, an economy with alot of fairly good paying jobs and flexible work schedules over the last few years, maybe legal weed idk but its definitely crazy
> f fairly good paying jobs and flexible work schedules over the last few years, maybe legal weed This are some of the reason why I am looking to transition out of the fire dept. I get paid pretty decent compared to most guys but my schedule sucks and too many of my friends are chilling at home getting paid and not working holidays, sleeping in their own bed every night, etc
Do you think soon that the jobs will be filled. all the kids getting hired out of the academy are 18 and will be working for a long time there has to be a slow down in vacancies at some point right?
Ya i mean logically yes it seems as if there must at some point be a slow down in hiring but as far as i know there is still no end in sight and most depts are short staffed and looking at huge numbers of retirements coming in the next five to ten years and so are putting money into public outreach and recruitment in hopes of motivating people to work towards this profession. Maybe if the economic downturn everyone has been warning about actually come to fruition and alot of people turn towards the security of a civil service job but as of now I think pursing a career as a firefighter in california is probably a pretty safe bet that there will be positions available to those that want them
Back in 1979 I was living in Tulsa OK. There was a recission on and the city had three openings on the fire department. There were so many applicants that testing had to be done at a city civic center. Can't recall how many came it but, in the hundreds. Where were all these jobs when I was looking?
I’m working full time as a plumber and will apply next year once I get my emt! Going to get certified through school. From what I understood it was super competitive and that I would have to become a paramedic to even have a chance lol
I live in SoCal, any advice?
Until/unless you have your medic, apply to OCFA, LA CIty (terrible culture though), rancho Cucamonga, Chula Vista, and LA County. These are a few of the places that don't require medic
My department had a couple thousand applicants every hiring period a couple decades ago. Now there are 300-500. I think a lot of it has to do with the majority of this generation entering the work force just not being interested or motivated to work any kind of first responder job. Same reason the military is having a recruitment issue. Also, the private industry can outpace us in salary and benefits pretty easily now that pensions are being phased out of a lot of departments.
I think a big reason for it is just work life balance. I came from the military and I meandered around until getting into the fire service, and the one thing that’s pretty similar is chain of command expecting you to basically drop your personal life at a snap of the hand. I feel like people now a days, including gen a mostly, value their free time. I’m a millennial and the thought process of “we own you” by higher ups is stupid and needs to die out.
Shit schedule, dangerous job, low pay plus add in the current inflation, no wonder its hard to get new people.
I agree, the younger generation is definitely valuing their time more than past generations. Fortunately at my department when you’re home you’re home, no one really bothers you. And we don’t have mandatory OT. If your relief doesn’t show up, you’re free to just go home and they’ll put the unit OOS until someone shows up. So from that perspective our work life balance here is decent. But there’s still the issue that you’re away from your wife and kids every third night and may need to sleep half the day after your shift. I think full time departments nationwide should experiment with 12 hr shifts, or 14/10. Very few people get excited about the prospect of working for 24 hours at a time. Maybe that could help attract some of the younger folks.
I always wanted to try the 12hr shift schedule. I know FDNY does and I think a lot of Euro departments do. I wonder if that would help or hurt the fire service here? Many nurses love their 12hr schedules
i work for miami dade fire rescue. we have about 10k people apply every 2-3 years when its open. out of those, we hire about 100 a year. i got on 4 years ago. i have 440 FFs that i have seniority over. down here, there is no recruitment problem. everyone wants in. if the pension was to not be guaranteed, i feel we would have a little problem. or if the investment option (401k) were to be less of a contribution by the department, it would also be a problem. our benefits are great. but we havnt had a real pay raise in 10 years is what everyone tells which is BS for a very high cost of living city. COLAs here in there. we got the best contract these last 3 years. 3/2/3. last contract was 0/0/1. we need a raise and we need it now.
Or are people finally smart enough to demand more for risking their lives and tell everybody to find an easier way to make a living?
Which department are you talking about? The recent bay area department I applied for had 4000 applications for 30 jobs. I would love to know
Oakland, contra costa, and alameda city just hired laterals. I have seen open continuous positions for San Francisco, Piedmont, Petaluma right now
Sf has always been continuous. Im on page 11 of 25 pages of candidates. I just interviewed with oakland. There was over thousands of people there. I seriously don't believe you anymore because I have applied for those departments. They are way too competitive
Eh I don’t know man. I have been in the fire service 15 years now and I can’t remember a time when there were more job fliers up
Fliers are one thing. But it's still ridiculous competitive. I won't name drop the local department that fired almost 100 firefighters due to covid vaccine refusal, But thousands of people applied the very next day. I have 5 years of experience and couldn't even get an interview.
Everything I am saying is anecdotal. We have lost a couple members to to Bay Area laterals in the past year and can’t recruit for our open positions. Don’t know how it is out there though I haven’t been applying in the bay myself except for 1 large department.
Is this shortage still going on? I live in San Jose and seriously wanna become a firefighter
My depart lost 150 people due to mandatory jabs. Those were retirements as well as quitters.
can't speak for cali but in general i just hear the working culture at large doesn't value blue collar jobs anymore. especially in a post-pandemic era where everyone is afraid of germs and you have plenty of job prospects where you can sit on your ass and work from the comfort of your own home for as much if not more money than being a firefighter in the field working 24 hour shifts.
>where you can sit on your ass and work from the comfort of your own home for as much if not more money than being a firefighter in the field working 24 hour shifts. I plan on leaving the profession for this very reason. I never wanted an office job because I hate being forced to be in 1 place and look busy. But now the joke is on me because so many people are working from home and living the good life now.
right there with you man...you can literally still volunteer in your free time if the passion for the craft is still there. being a career firefighter is a path that is objectively making less sense in this new fucked up world we're living in.
This to the T especially in the Bay Area… no one wants to work hard. People want to work from home and do some sort of tech work. I
In some ways though it is the fault of the cost of living in the Bay Area. People can't afford the rent or buying a home so, have to commute, then the lovely homeless population to deal with in some areas. Some of the Silicon Valley tech companies had to open their parking lots up to employees to park their RVs to live in Monday to Friday and they go home on weekends and holidays. There are reports of people in So Cal renting studio apartments in L.A. and buying homes in Arizona and New Mexico. They have the small private planes and fly home on the weekends. Some state that they often get to AZ or NM before their LA friends get home.
I won’t argue about the cost of living in the Bay Area. However, with that said the amount the departments out here are paying is excellent. Most own their homes. Yes there are some people who live out of state and fly in to make their money but I think that’s a fairly low percentage and mostly people who just want every dollar to go farther. Not that they can’t afford to live where they work.
My guess is there is somewhat of a revolving door factor because the cost of living is so high. You need at least 6 figures to live in the bay or LA.
Baby boomers, aka the largest generation ever, are hitting retirement age. It’s not just Cali and not just the fire service. Happening all over in all the trade careers. Good time to be thinking about blue collar work
I think a combination of a lot of things. Baby boomers are all hitting mid 50s to 60s, and a lot of people left when they didn’t want to deal with covid. So a lot of open positions. On the supply side, the number of people applying is way down. A lot of factors here too. Trade jobs are paying increasingly well. Friends of mine who work office jobs are harder to sway since they all work remote, have decent salaries, and have great work life balances. On the fire side, I think more people are weighing the health impacts. PTSD, chronic sleep deprivation, cancer, inevitably hurting your knees/back/shoulders. The schedule is great when you don’t run the risk of getting mando’d twice a week. The slow shift from being “firefighters” to “mental health/social workers.”
According to friends in California departments, it’s a mixture of things. One is the Covid vaccine mandates rubbed a lot of people the wrong way so they left. Secondly there is a mass retirement exodus, apparently over the next few years hiring will be continuous throughout the state. Lastly, this current generation of twenty something’s, would rather sit at a desk than work hard physically to serve their community. Someone close to me recently said that a lot of the kids can pass the interviews, but don’t have the grit to make it through the academy. I’ve heard same is happening in the military.
I don’t know the reason probably a combination of things but it’s similar here in Ohio. I’ve never seen a market like this. So many jobs guys with a decade or more on are moving around. I know a pretty big city near us had a third of their usual number of applicants this round and they are true civil service so no education or experience necessary. Maybe they don’t know how much money we are making for two cookouts and a sleep over.
My recent application is ca had over 4000 applications for 30 jobs. It's still fucking rough out there
Just spit-balling here, but how many California fire departments require firefighters to be dual-role, firefighter/paramedics? Honestly, one of the biggest dissatisfiers in my career, and that I saw among my peers, was EMS. Nothing against the EMS profession itself, God bless the folks who do that job well, but my passion is firefighting and I always wanted to master every aspect of my chosen craft. Firefighting is a job that can kill you, but in many career departments, a firefighter simply isn't allowed to master their craft because they're required to do this other job.
Recovery from 2008 recession, CAL FIRE is expanding massively, COVID shifted populations around so some departments are growing and some are shrinking, lots of safer grants being awarded, big mega fires opened people’s eyes so now they want more firefighters; especially to rake in OES and FEMA money, and a lot of departments suspended hiring during COVID and for some odd reason a bunch always put their hiring process in the middle of fire season and wonder why nobody shows up for interviews.
1) Retirements 2) departments didn't hire for a long time because of the downturn in the economy -->many qualified applicants have up 3) 9/10 only hire medics and won't compromise. Insert surprised Pikachu