Governor Malloy released his anticipated budget and the changes to the Department of Labor are modest.  You can view the whole report (and the DOL portion beginning at 193) here. 

Rather than dissect the whole thing, here are a few things that caught my eye:

  • The DOL’s Unemployment Insurance Division is big. Very big. And getting bigger with over 400 workers, an increase of nearly 10 percent this year.  That size is expected to remain for the next two years. 
  • By comparison, some of the other divisions have vacancy rates, meaning that these areas are making do with far less than they have requested or had. 
  • The Wage & Workforce Standards Division has a lot of complaints or requests — nearly 26,000 last year. But that number is projected to increase very modestly over the next two years.
  • At the same time, there are just 34 employees there (with 2 vacancies).  It’s not too hard to figure out the ratio of workers and complaints.
  • In a similar fashion, the Connecticut version of OSHA has just 23 employees.
  • But workplace inspections as well as violations are projected to increase. How? Presumably, more enforcement proceedings brought by the state.

It’s still much too early to tell whether this budget will be trimmed in areas like this.  But at least the Department projections give us some insights into what a department might look like in the next few years and where they anticipate their focus will be.