Becky Hawke entered her first budget season as Wilmington’s city manager with a new approach to city employee recruitment and retention focused on paying a living wage – what a single worker needs to make to cover their basic needs.
Hawke introduced her compensation proposal during the Wilmington City Council’s first budget work session last fall. She’s careful to point out that her idea is just a starting point for budget discussions around employee recruitment and retention efforts.
The proposal could raise the city’s minimum wage for its employees to $21.89 per hour, or just over $45,500 annually. That’s 60% of the median income in the Wilmington area for a single person, which is nearly $76,000, as defined by federal government numbers, according to Hawke. The city’s current minimum pay is $17.38 per hour, or just over $36,000 annually.
As of Hawke’s presentation, just over 530 employees, or roughly half of the city’s workforce, earned below 80% AMI, with around 140, or 13%, earning below 60% AMI.
The city of Wilmington is one of the region’s largest employers, with a roster of around 1,200 employees. During the last fiscal year, the city saw the highest churn rates the organization has seen in the past five years.
In fiscal year 2025, which ran from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025, the city saw a turnover rate of nearly 17%, with approximately 180 people leaving the organization, Hawke told council members. Some of the highest turnover and vacancy rates existed in the public works and police departments.
Employee recruitment and retention isn’t a new problem for the city of Wilmington, and the city is far from the only local government in the region and state to grapple with it as governments compete with one another and the private sector for workers.
In her roughly 20 years in local government, Hawke’s time as a human resources director and in other employee-facing positions gave her a front-row seat to recruitment and retention efforts.
Hawke previously served as the town manager of Matthews, North Carolina, before coming to Wilmington last summer. While working for the town, Hawke said she spearheaded “pretty notable leaps” in pay structure, raising the annual pay for a police officer by about 19%. She said the wage boost helped the town get a real look from prospective employees in a competitive job market.
“Nobody is getting rich coming to work for local government,” Hawke said. “People are drawn to the profession and stay in the profession for other reasons, typically, but we all have bills, and so recognizing that if we want to have talented, qualified people, we have to be able to compete. Wages are certainly an important component of that; they’re not the only component.”
Carolina Beach leaders are also working to recruit and retain employees, said town manager Bruce Oakley.
Last month, the Carolina Beach Town Council approved doubling the merit pay employees can receive from 2% to 4%. Oakley said that it could help keep or attract new employees.
“We’re just trying to keep up with our neighbors,” he said. “We don’t have the resources to offer signing bonuses like some places do, but we do have the ability to, and we’ve got a council that supports looking at our salaries and our benefits, so we can be competitive.”
Carolina Beach, which employs around 130 people, conducted a salary study in recent years to gauge how its wages compare with those of other local governments in the region.
Now, town leaders plan to focus on employee benefits, Oakley said. That includes considering expanding family coverage on the town’s insurance and taking another look at the town’s 401(k) match.
“We’re exploring a bunch of options this year,” Oakley said, “and I believe in this budget, we’ll have some changes to our benefit package that will make it even more attractive to work here.”
For Southport City Manager Noah Saldo, workforce recruitment and retention are top priorities. “Attracting and retaining employees can be challenging for local governments,” Saldo wrote in a statement. “The private sector has often outpaced public-sector compensation, particularly as employment trends and pay structures have shifted nationally since the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Southport completed a salary study in 2023, which led to the adoption of a new pay plan and increased base salaries for many positions. That pay plan is reviewed and updated to ensure competitiveness, alongside cost-of-living and performance-based raises.
Beyond wages, Hawke said, benefits, opportunities for promotion, training and work environment make the difference when it comes to attracting and keeping workers.
“Whether it’s social media or the internet or word of mouth, people will come to understand whether you are a good employer to work for, or if there are other options,” she said. “And so, wages are important, but work environment is important, and you’ve got to have all of those pieces if you are going to be able to continue to deliver on what the community expects.”
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