Philly wants to hire desperately needed lifeguards for city pools. It’s now free for young people to apply.

It’s January, so it may be hard to think about getting in the pool, but months ahead of summer, the Philadelphia Parks and Recreation Department wants young people to start thinking about becoming a city lifeguard.

And they’ve now made it free to try.

Hoping to attract more young people to work at municipal pools, the city will now pay for potentially burdensome application and certification fees for all candidates between the ages of 16 and 24, said Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kathryn Ott Lovell.

Covering the costs — about $175 per person — is the city’s latest step to combat a local and national lifeguard shortage, a hiring crisis that contributed to 21 of the city’s 70-plus neighborhood pools remaining shuttered last summer (others were closed for renovations). Trying to remove potential hiring barriers, the city is also working to provide candidates with free physicals, which can cost upward of $100 at drugstores and clinics. They’ll also soon add more training sites.

Anything for more guards, Lovell said.

“There’s been a lifeguard shortage, both nationally and locally, and we feel it very acutely here in Philadelphia,” Lovell said in an interview Friday. “We’ve increased pay for lifeguards. There’s no longer a residency requirement for lifeguards, but we still struggle and we have not been able to open all of our swimming pools for the last two summers. We literally can’t find people to be lifeguards.”

With the new enticements and ramped up recruiting, the city hopes to hire close to 400 lifeguards in the coming months, Lovell said.

That will be a challenge. Last year, there were only 196 guards.

Both nationally and locally, the lifeguard shortage can be attributed to factors ranging from the pandemic, increased summer-job options for college students, a nationwide labor shortage, and fewer young people who know how to swim.

“But we have this hyperlocal labor shortage, and it really impacts us,” Lovell said. Especially in a city where young people live daily amid a soaring gun violence epidemic, she said.

“We have got to open these pools so that kids have something positive to do,” Lovell said. “If we don’t open these pools in underserved neighborhoods, where children of color live, those kids won’t learn how to swim and we’re only perpetuating this problem of not being able to hire lifeguards.”

The pandemic dramatically worsened an already existing shortage, said Lovell, with some city pool workers leaving and not returning. And it’s not just lifeguards. There’s also a desperate need for pool-maintenance workers who help manage pools, but don’t need lifeguard certification. (And they don’t get wet.)

“We’ve never had an issue hiring them,” Lovell said of the pool attendants. “It’s a great summer job for folks. But we can’t hire them. We only had like 250 last year and we’d love to have 400.”

Last April, the city raised lifeguard salaries to $16 to $18 per hour based on experience, and increased pool maintenance attendants’ pay to $15 per hour. Guards typically work 35 hours a week, from June to August. The training classes prepare them to swim 300 yards without stopping, tread water for two minutes, and retrieve a 10-pound brick from deep pool water. The city offers swim training classes year-round at Lincoln High School in Northeast Philadelphia, but additional training will be offered at Friends Select School in Center City, starting in mid-February, said Lovell.

“If you can swim, we will train you up,” she said.

For her part, Lovell hopes the new steps will mean more young people choosing to work at a city pool.

“It’s just a tradition,” Lovell said. “It’s just a part of life in the city of Philadelphia that people treasure.”