Georgia’s 2024 Department of Labor Budget

The $8.1 million included in the FY 2024 budget for the Georgia Department of Labor (DOL) increases spending from FY 2023 levels by over $2 million. This increase is driven by pay raises that seek to improve staff recruitment and retention.

The bulk of FY 2024 state spending for the DOL will go to two divisions: (1) Department Administration, which provides administrative support to each program division within DOL, and (2) Unemployment Insurance (UI), which collects UI taxes from state employers and distributes unemployment benefits to eligible claimants. Each of Georgia’s DOL divisions administer programs that are funded by a significant share of federal dollars, which covers 84 percent of FY 2024 DOL spending, a slight decrease from FY 2023 as federal spending remained steady compared to state spending increases.

FY 2024 may hold fiscal uncertainty for DOL, as supplemental “administrative assessment” funding from employer payroll taxes expired under previous legislation and won’t resume through newly passed legislation for several months. Since 2016, administrative assessment funding has provided DOL with an average of $21 million per year, which is typically three to four times the amount lawmakers appropriate to DOL annually through general funds. With the possibility of another recession looming, DOL does not hold the claims technology infrastructure nor adequate UI Trust reserves to process and pay out significant UI claims should Georgia’s labor market significantly weaken.

Unemployment Disparities Within Georgia’s Current Labor Market Could Translate to Even Steeper Inequities in a Future Recession

A gradual economic slowdown has started, despite a labor market that remains broadly strong and has seen jobs return and surpass prepandemic levels in every major industry except its public sector. Several factors demonstrate that Georgia’s longstanding workforce disparities across race and ethnicity could worsen under a continued slowdown: disparate unemployment shifts among Black and white workers; net rises in underemployment among Black workers and Latina women from 2019 to 2022; and increases in overrepresentation of Black workers on UI rolls not seen since 2021.