Pima County and the city of Tucson are experiencing a shortage of lifeguards this year that has been compounded by the pandemic and has resulted in a reduction of the pools’ availability to the public.
While city and county public pools were closed during the onset of the pandemic last summer, they’re returning this year with fewer lifeguards than the summer of 2019.
The county staffed about 150 lifeguards in 2019, but only has around 120 this year. City pools had about 200 lifeguards in 2019, but only have about 90 on staff this summer.
According to Grant Bourguet, program manager at Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation, county pools have lost half of their staff from before the pandemic. Before COVID-19 wiped out their summer gigs, about 80% of lifeguards said they would return in 2020. After the county sent out a letter saying summer pools would be open this year, only 50% of past lifeguards responded.
“We lost half of our staff, because when you don’t work them the previous summer, they have to find other jobs and they don’t come back,” Bourguet said. “While many places were closed in 2020, many places were open, so people naturally find other jobs.”
Billy Sassi, Tucson’s aquatics program manager, says up to 70% of lifeguards return each summer, but the return rate dropped to 45% this year.
“(Attrition) is something that just occurs. Then you add the pandemic in this past year and nobody coming back, and not a lot of (lifeguard certification) classes being taught until the end of spring,” Sassi said.
Lifeguards have to renew their certifications every two years to ensure they’re ready to respond to water-related emergencies.
Both the city and county typically begin training lifeguards in the winter and wrap up in March, but those trainings were put on hold during the height of the pandemic. Instead, training began in March and is wrapping up in June as lifeguards with valid certifications staff the pools.
“It’s a lifeguard shortage due to the inability to train and so therefore, you are now having to retrain new people that you never intend to do,” Bourguet explained. “Typically in the past, we would have finished our lifeguard training by mid-March.”
A perfect storm
While the pandemic halted the lifeguard certification trainings that prepare staff for the upcoming season, lifeguard shortages are a national issue that precedes COVID-19.
B.J. Fisher, the director of health and safety for the American Lifeguard Association, said the shortage actualized 20 years ago when the number of swimming facilities increased without enough of the youth who typically become lifeguards overseeing them.
“We were building swimming facilities, hotels, condominiums and requiring more lifeguards,” he said. “We didn’t have the youth, the numbers coming through into the workforce.”
According to Sassi, lifeguard shortages have been an issue for Tucson since the Great Recession.
“The rest of the country and us fall into a category that after 2008, we have had a shortage. That year just brought a huge shortage because that was when we had the big economic slump, everybody cut back,” he said. “We’ve been trying to play catch-up ever since.”
While lifeguard shortages existed before the pandemic, COVID-19 made matters even worse.
“It’s a perfect storm that’s happened to us, and it is a real terrible crisis. We could foresee a third of the pools not opening this summer,” Fisher said. “Every year, we’ve always had dwindling numbers. But last year, we lost that normal huge chunk that comes in — 300,000 or more first-time individuals never came into the workforce last year.”
In addition to a lack of training to bring on employees, many lifeguards found other summertime employment options amid the uncertain prospect of pools reopening this summer.
“Until they actually touch the water on Memorial Day weekend, you couldn’t truly guarantee that it was actually going to open,” Bourguet said. “There’s been a lot of talk, but we being government agencies that have opened up facilities, you kind of have to prove yourself that you are doing it before people believe you.”
Pima County’s lifeguards make $13.15 an hour while Tucson’s lifeguards make $12.15 an hour as intermittent seasonal employees. According to Sassi, many employees found better-paying summer jobs elsewhere.
“Being a lifeguard or water safety instructor just doesn’t have the same allure that it did years ago,” he said. “So pay had a lot to do with it as well.”
Public pools cut programs
Tucson’s has 12 public pools open this summer with recreational swim at reduced capacity and diving board and slides open depending on available staff. In the summer of 2019, 20 city pools were open.
“In response to (the lifeguard shortage) we have fewer pools open, and the hours aren’t quite as long,” Sassi said. “So we may not be running slides or diving boards all the time.”
Most of the pools are open for seven-hour blocks, and some swimming lessons will be available in July. There will be no Tucson swim team programs this year.
Pima County’s nine public pools also have limited capacity and programming. The lack of lifeguards caused the county to shorten its hours and only host its core programs: family swim, open swim, swimming lessons and swim team.
Open recreational swim is typically available for four hours in the afternoons, but family swim time is now limited to two-hour slots on the weekends.
The county’s swim team program is operating virtually by entering swimmers’ times in an online database instead of offering in-person swim meets.
“This is going to be the modified, hybrid summer,” Bourguet said. “Just because you are given the green light to resume, it’s going to take time to build back that infrastructure.”
Preparing for summers to come
As the city and county continue to train lifeguards to try to get certifications up to speed, the setback from this year makes future summers’ lifeguard supply uncertain.
“We’re trying to keep the 12 pools open this summer. We’ll hopefully get a few more people here in the next week or so applying for lifeguarding positions. Hopefully, that will help with some things, but we’re minimally staffed so we’re not running full programs.” Sassi said. “It’ll be a while before we get to full capacity with full programs, but we can still make things work at times.”
Bourguet says staff are concurrently training lifeguards while operating pools for public use. He hopes training will ramp up in the winter and put the county in a solid position to fully staff pools next summer.
“We hope that we can begin the healing process and the retraining and rebuilding of the foundation of lifeguards,” he said. “Hopefully, provided it is safe to do so a year from today, we will be in a position to fully resume all services out of the county’s swimming pools. We hope that it’s just going to be this summer, but it could be longer, so we’ll see. We’re trying to train everybody and their brother to be lifeguard certified.”
