Virginia DMV boosts pay, ahead of state salary review [Video]

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles has been raising pay for more than half of its employees since August, based on a study by the same international consulting firm that is now helping Gov. Glenn Youngkin‘s administration review the salary structure for classified state employees.

Project Upshift began after the department commissioned a study more than a year ago by Deloitte, a London-based accounting and consulting company, to re-evaluate the salaries it pays to employees, especially those in the agency’s 76 customer service centers, to reduce a high turnover rate for its staff.

“We had an unsustainable level of turnover,” said DMV Commissioner Gerald Lackey, who estimated that the agency was losing frontline workers at a rate of 35% to 46% per month before the pay raises began in August.

Lackey, whom Youngkin appointed in March 2023, said people spraying vehicles at a nearby car wash were making more money per hour than people at the front …