Needham Pools Have Luck with Lifeguards

July 18, 2025
•  As other communities continue to grapple with serious lifeguard shortages, Needham’s pools report full staffs, but only after a sluggish hiring process this summer season.

On Friday afternoon, the lifeguards at the Rosemary Pool took a break from their posts in the sun, the pool cleared out of swimmers and coaches. At any given time, a minimum of 18 guards are on duty, surveying the water and staying vigilant.

Lifeguards at both Rosemary and the Charles River YMCA are typically high school and college students on their summer breaks, representatives from both facilities said, though they each experienced some difficulty in recruiting those employees this season.

For the YMCA, which operates its indoor pool year-round, a persistent lifeguard shortage each summer pushed the organization to offer a boosted summer rate, about $2-4 more per hour than its standard pay, Executive Director Paula Jacobson said. The facility has closed its pool due to a lack of guards in the past, she said, but only as a “last resort.”

The facility is full-staffed on lifeguards this year, with many past guards returning to the facility each season, though hiring started back in January, Jacobson said. She attributes the slow recruitment to a number of factors, including the job’s difficulty and seriousness.

“It’s a lot of training, extensive training, more so than it’s ever been,” she said. “It is a very difficult job. People’s lives are in your hands.”

Students also seem to prefer working at an outdoor pool as opposed to an indoor one, Jacobson said.

Stacey Mulroy, director of Park and Recreation, pointed to an opposing dilemma: Young people wish to work higher paying jobs in air-conditioned buildings. A starting lifeguard at Rosemary makes $17.87 an hour, but returning guards get a pay bump, she said.

“We’re a government agency. We pay what we can pay. But with Starbucks hiring at 20 bucks an hour, or other places that are doing similar things, it’s hard to compete,” Mulroy said. “We do try, but I think that that can be a deterrent for some kids that really need to make some money over the summer.”

Communities across Massachusetts have felt a similar strain, with many seeking to fill a series of vacancies that threatened timely pool openings. In Pittsfield, officials will forgo lifeguards at one swimming location due to the shortage. A beach in Westboro is also “swim at your own risk” for the fourth consecutive year.

The shortage in the state cropped up a few years ago — in June 2023, the Department of Conservation and Recreation announced 800 lifeguard positions it needed to fill.

At the Charles River Y, Jacobson said their shortage began pre-Covid, perhaps due to Needham’s demographics.

“The community of Needham, it is difficult to staff all of our part-time positions more so than it’s ever been,” Jacobson said. “It’s very expensive to live in Needham. Many kids are doing so many extracurricular activities and work that they don’t have time for jobs.”

Between 150 and 200 swimmers visit the Y each day in the summer, between camps, swim lessons, lap swimmers and families, Jacobson said.

Lifeguarding involves a constant state of acute surveillance, and guards typically rotate to a new position every 15 minutes to keep their brain focused and prevent boredom, Jacobson and Mulroy said. Lifeguards in Massachusetts must be 16 years or older.

When the Town of Needham started accepting applications in January, the candidate pool accumulated at a much slower rate, she said — while they expect to “have a comfortable number” of guards by mid-March, Mulroy said it took until the end of April. They currently have a staff of 57.

The pool’s maintenance crew usually takes the longest to hire, Mulroy said, because it involves trash pick-up and often ice cream clean-up, but this year, they had to turn away more than 20 applicants. Those staffers can start as young as 15 years old.

“My colleagues in surrounding towns who have had to make their beaches swim at your own risk and are struggling are like, ‘how are you doing this?’ And I’m just like, ‘I don’t know,’” Mulroy said.

Hiring in the years following the pandemic proved a challenge, but Rosemary Pool has bounced back, Mulroy said.

“Since 2022, we’ve been really, really lucky and haven’t had to worry too much about that,” she said of the lifeguard shortage.

Mulroy and Jacobson expect they’ll make some scheduling adjustments toward the end of the summer, when college students head back to school. Because of their familiarity with the pool and its programming, Needham teens are the best hires for the Y, Jacobson said.

“We like to hire Needham high school kids, whether they start as a volunteer, they start as a swim aid, maybe they’re on our swim team. Those are our best, most reliable, committed staff, because they’re committed to the community, committed to kids in Needham, and they know every time they come home on a break or for the summer, that they can get full-time employment,” she said.