The CA DMV hasn’t hired a new person in three or four years, so I doubt they’re padding their work force. Also, think about it. The driver’s license is the fundamental document of every person in the state. If you don’t have one (or a DMV issued ID card, which involves the same paper work, minus road test), you essentially don’t exist in society. You can’t have a bank account, you can’t access government services, you can’t even ride Amtrak. (About the only thing you can do without one is get a library card.) So just about everyone needs one, and has to get it renewed every five years.
Also driving. All of the documentation involving cars is done through the DMV, including the yearly registration and tags, (though if you have AAA, you can do it there). And since the only people who don’t have cars are those who can’t afford it, or aren’t able to legally, a huge number of people have to deal with the DMV for that, as well. And there are other things, like boats, and special class licenses for professional drivers, etc.
Then see that the Los Angeles Area, for example, which has about 11 million people, and only about eight or nine DMV offices (ten, max). So even if a lot of the paper work is done through the mail and processed in Sacramento, there still are a huge number of in person transactions that have to be done. The employees who aren’t at the front desk are processing all those documents. It’s a huge amount of mind-numbing bureaucracy.
The DMV is the primary way for the state to keep track of people. When a cop wants to check you out s/he will call in your driver’s license number. Car insurance companies do the same. So the state has a hightend interest in maintaining all kinds of documentation, and even though the population of the state continues to grow, they’re cutting back on funding.
I don’t know how effificient those people in back are. It’s probably pretty hard to get fired. The people at the front desk might be morons or not–I think most are just indifferent. Whatever the case, without a doubt they have a huge amount of paperwork to process.
Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but the DMV for me has never been the nightmare people describe it as. I’ve had only one worker be incompetent with me. When she rejected a document I had, I demanded to see her supervisor. The supervisor checked something on the computer, and said everything was okay.
Otherwise, my visits to the DMV have been fine. It’s not the five hour wait and a crabby widow person. Usually it’s just an hour to an hour and a half at the height of the day, and the widow person just says, “Show me what you’ve got,” types in something and then, “Okay, go to window #X,” or “Pay $XX and your done.”
