One out of three public pools in the U.S. is at risk of not opening this summer due to a nationwide shortage of lifeguards.
Across the U.S., millions of students are marking the end of another school year and preparing for summer festivities, and likely high on their list is getting some time under the sun.
Around a third to nearly half the nation's more than 300,000 pools will likely be affected as the summer begins, according to an estimate from Bernard J. Fisher II, director of health and safety of the American Lifeguard Association.
"The average pay has always been bare minimum," said Lieneke Keihl, who works as an instructor trainer with the American Red Cross based out of Dayton, Ohio." are opting for jobs that pay more money." "The only reason why the employers have gotten away with the pay is due to the fact that we rely on the youth that doesn't have to pay rent," said Fisher, with the lifeguard association."We're going to have to raise the pay. We're going to have to give incentives to get the numbers that we need."
"When we started back up in March of 2021, we were limited on how many lifeguards we could have in a class and so that impeded our ability to get to 750 last year," Jay said."So this will be our second summer that we've had trouble recruiting lifeguards but most recently we've just had a hard time getting people to return to work as we leave the pandemic."
More than 3,900 American children die of drowning each year, for an average of 11 deaths each day, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are roughly another 8,000 nonfatal drownings annually, which can cause brain damage and other serious outcomes, like long-term disabilities, according to the CDC.
And even the lifeguard shortage prompts some pools and beaches to close, some American children will still find places to swim over the summer, which likely would be unsupervised and dangerous, Fisher said.
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