Can CTA get back on track? New data show a workforce still in flux.

Bus and rail jobs are getting filled, but current employees keep leaving, according to new data released this week by the Chicago Transit Authority.

A line of job seekers waits to speak with a CTA representative at a hiring fair in 2023.
A line of job seekers waits to speak with a Chicago Transit Authority representative at a hiring fair in January 2023. The agency has offered more job fairs to fill vacancies and sweetened the pot for prospective employees with hiring bonuses. Lou Foglia for WBEZ
A line of job seekers waits to speak with a CTA representative at a hiring fair in 2023.
A line of job seekers waits to speak with a Chicago Transit Authority representative at a hiring fair in January 2023. The agency has offered more job fairs to fill vacancies and sweetened the pot for prospective employees with hiring bonuses. Lou Foglia for WBEZ

Can CTA get back on track? New data show a workforce still in flux.

Bus and rail jobs are getting filled, but current employees keep leaving, according to new data released this week by the Chicago Transit Authority.

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New data from the Chicago Transit Authority show the agency is still struggling to plug workforce gaps that are causing reductions in rail and bus service across the system.

At the monthly meeting of the Chicago Transit Board on Wednesday, President Dorval Carter expressed optimism that the agency has stopped the “hemorrhaging” of employees it experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and has started to fill the hundreds of vacancies on the bus and rail side.

But the data show that even as the agency is hiring, it continues to lose employees. And Carter stressed it will take time to bring the CTA back to pre-pandemic service levels.

A customer service station at the CTA Forest Park Blue Line stop.
The Chicago Transit Authority has said its staffing woes are not unique and that the pandemic spurred staffing declines. Taylor Glascock for WBEZ

Throughout the pandemic, Chicago transit officials boasted that it was one of the only agencies in the country to keep service levels normal during the height of COVID-19. But CTA has not been able to maintain normal operations and had to reduce its bus and rail service this year.

“Our short-term goals are being met,” Carter said. “We will align our schedules to our existing available workforce.”

The CTA regularly adjusts bus service schedules based on ridership demands, but the changes are usually isolated to specific bus lines, not the entire system. The CTA has blamed service reductions, daily delays and filthy trains — all of which have tested the patience of Chicago commuters — on staff vacancies.

The agency has started publicly posting its hiring data on its Monthly Scorecard, an interactive online dashboard intended to show customers how the agency is pivoting to a post-pandemic recovery. It’s the first time the agency has publicly provided a detailed breakdown of its monthly hiring and workforce trends.

CTA started 2023 with an ambitious goal of hiring 700 additional bus drivers and the data it released Wednesday showed it is about a third of the way toward completing that goal.

The agency budgeted for 3,707 full-time positions on the bus operations side — its largest division — but its actual headcount hasn’t surpassed 3,300 in the last year.

Five years ago, the bus operations had 4,378 employees on the payroll.

“When I reference progress, I am not comparing today’s CTA versus the pre-pandemic version of this agency, which enjoyed 40% more ridership and a thousand more bus and rail operators,” Carter said at this week’s board meeting. “I am always discussing it in terms of short-term progress.”

Attrition continues to be an issue. In 2022, CTA filled 431 full-time employees on the bus operations side but lost more than 500 full-time workers for a net loss of 53 employees. 

A bar chart shows how many operators the CTA has hired and compares them with how many staff have departed.
The Chicago Transit Authority shared this slide at an April board meeting. It shows that, even as the agency has continued to hire more workers (the top part of the bar chart), some current staff have departed the agency (the lower part of the bar chart).

In its push to rebuild its ranks on the bus operations side, the CTA has been offering incentives such as a $1,000 hiring bonus, free training and resources for applicants who don’t have a commercial drivers license. It has also raised its starting hourly wage to compete with the private sector. The agency is offering more training classes and said they have increased in size.

“Each time I report to this body that we are graduating a new class of rail operators, you can be certain that another is already in training and heading towards serving our customers in the very near future,” Carter told the board.

But historical data of workforce levels show that CTA’s staffing was in flux well before the pandemic — with year-over-year reductions in the number of bus drivers, according to a WBEZ analysis of CTA employee data reported annually to the Regional Transportation Authority.

Between 2015 and 2022, the agency saw a steady reduction in the number of full- and part-time bus drivers. But the CTA told WBEZ that those fluctuations did not adversely impact the delivery of service. The one exception to the year-over-year declines is 2018 when it reported a net gain of staff due to the hiring of part-time drivers, something the agency said it did in anticipation of future retirements.

Fliers advertising CTA jobs sit on a table at a hiring fair in January 2023.
Fliers advertising CTA jobs sit on a table at a hiring fair in January 2023. Lou Foglia for WBEZ
Before March 2022, entry-level positions were only offered on a part-time basis and moving up the ranks took years. That’s when CTA started recruiting full-time bus operators.The onboarding process, the agency says, can take up to four months.

CTA’s staffing woes are not unique: Public transit agencies have been hammered by retirements and competition from the private sector – a national crisis exacerbated by the pandemic. A recent survey of more than 100 transit agencies by the American Transportation Association found that 92% are having difficulty with hiring and 64% struggle with employee retention.

“The sort of aging workforce, retirement rates were a problem for some agencies before the pandemic, but the pandemic kind of made those issues more acute,” said Matt Dickens, director of policy and research at the association. Their research found that in 2019, 40% of the transit workforce nationally was over 55.

Dickens says concerns about work schedules, compensation and conflicts with management have contributed to the exodus of transit workers. He says agencies will continue to struggle building up their ranks — particularly among a younger generation— if they don’t overhaul their hiring practices and allow for more flexibility. Chicago is no different.

A view through a window of an El train at night.
Some CTA employees told WBEZ they are worried about levels of crime and negative interactions with passengers. Taylor Glascock for WBEZ

CTA employees who spoke to WBEZ in recent weeks on the condition of anonymity about the culture at the agency describe a growing disconnect with leadership and they say negative interactions with passengers have become all too common. WBEZ agreed to not use workers’ names to protect their jobs.

A rail operator said the level of crime and rampant drug use has gotten out of control. “It’s horrible with the things that are going on there. People are petrified.”

A bus mechanic said workers don’t get a say in which of the seven bus garages they’re stationed at or what shift they’ll be assigned. Everything is based on seniority.

The North Side garages are most coveted and staffed by the most tenured employees who commute from the north suburbs. Since the CTA is a separate agency from the City of Chicago, its employees are not required to live within city limits.

A spokesperson for the transit agency said that it is the collective bargaining agreement — not CTA policy — that determines the picking of schedules and work locations. There are two main unions that represent transit workers — one for the bus side, the other for rail operators. Under the current agreement, bus drivers get to pick their shifts four times a year, while maintenance workers get to pick their location every two years.

“I love the CTA. I really really like working for the CTA,” the bus mechanic said. “The drivers are doing everything that they can and everybody is working hard to keep it together.”

Since drivers make up a bulk of the bus operation side (there are about 10 drivers for every mechanic), mechanics have less of a say around bargaining time, the bus mechanic told WBEZ.

“I think that the disconnect really comes from headquarters,” the mechanic added. “I think they’re really out of touch with what is going on. I don’t think they really understand the concerns of the drivers and the mechanics.”

The rail operator was more blunt in his characterization of the leadership at CTA headquarters on 567 W. Lake St., saying, “Everything they do is window dressing and they’re really not trying to resolve it. They’re just trying to defend themselves.”

The CTA says it has added new resources to help complement the efforts led by Chicago police in addressing crime. That includes the hiring of private security firms.

Claudia Morell is a metro reporter covering government and transit issues for WBEZ.