MoDOT director credits worker retention to pay raises

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – After struggling for years to find workers, the Missouri Department of Transportation continues to gain staff. 

At one point, the state's transportation department was short a thousand employees, but now there's only 200 vacancies. Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) Director Patrick McKenna said another pay raise from the General Assembly is a big part of the solution. 

"We've stabilized," McKenna said in an interview. "I think that we hit our floor and we've been building up from that."

It's been a challenge for MoDOT, retaining employees or hiring workers to make up for staff retiring. McKenna said at the beginning of 2024, the department was short more than 500 workers and faced a 20% turnover rate. 

"We've hired in the last 14 months, we've hired about 1,150 people," McKenna said. "That means about 800 have left, but we're netting a positive gain and that's where we really need to build the next generation of transportation workers. Our team, even in this labor market, we’ve been making progress and we still have a lot of people retiring but we’ve been able to replace them."

Even with an increase in employees, MoDOT still faces a shortage of about 2 million labor hours. 

"That's where if you don't think we're doing as good of a job as you would like to see mowing or animal pickup or sign replace or other things that are critical," McKenna said.