N.C. Council of State & Executive Branch 2025 in Review – Part 2: Labor Commissioner Luke Farley

Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning. Today we’re continuing a series we began last week about 2025 accomplishments from key executive branch and Council of State agencies. We’ll dive right in.

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Whether they realize it or not, the most direct connection regular North Carolinians have with the North Carolina Department of Labor is this: the elevator they’re on is current on its inspection, and their kids didn’t get hurt on a ride at the state fair. That’s a job well done by Labor Commissioner Luke Farley. 

For business executives, though, the Department of Labor – and who leads it – ought to rank highly on the list of elected offices with outsized impact on their company.

As we wrote in 2023, “There is little standing in the way of new labor rules that a sympathetic agency head might enact. . . North Carolinians will decide in November 2024 on a race that impacts the state’s economy far more than most understand. We’ve thrived under a fair, balanced regulatory environment for decades – November 2024 may very well decide whether or not that continues.”

November 2024 did indeed decide. Republican Luke Farley defeated Braxton Winston, a Democrat, by 5.5%, ensuring the state’s fair and balanced approach to labor regulations will continue through at least 2028. 

Winston, who campaigned on transforming the Department of Labor into a government tool to champion “workers’ rights,” now leads the North Carolina AFL-CIO. The organization’s legislative agenda includes a $20 minimum wage and a bevy of new requirements for businesses on everything from infectious disease precautions to workplace violence prevention. 

We’re teasing a “ghost of Christmas past” here because state law confers vast authority on the Labor Commissioner. For example, he or she may “under proper restriction enter any public institution of the State, any factory, store, workshop, laundry, public eating house or mine, and interrogate any person employed therein or connected therewith.” 

The commissioner can collaborate with the attorney general to impose civil penalties and effectively shut down businesses that the commissioner deems noncompliant with rules or regulations.

Therefore, 2025 at the Department of Labor was almost as remarkable for what could have happened as what actually did happen. 

And what did happen? Farley’s Department of Labor showed that it can do the job and potentially take on even more. He cleared the state’s elevator inspection backlog for the first time in history, dropped the vacancy rate for Compliance Safety and Health Officers to a record low, and cut wait times for the department’s “consultative services” from 114 days to 30 days. For a deeper dive into some of Farley’s 2025 accomplishments, check out this Nexus piece on the commissioner’s balanced approach in his first nine months on the job. 

In a year-in-review press release, Farley said, “We’ve kept our promises, delivered real results, and rebuilt the department’s capacity to serve – and we’re only getting started.”

The old adage, “when you do good work, your reward is more work” comes to mind, though indeed, it would not be surprising if lawmakers considered expanding (and equipping) the department’s purview by transferring to its control some authorities from other agencies. Auditor Dave Boliek, for example, demonstrated he was equipped to take on additional responsibilities, so the General Assembly moved the State Board of Elections under his agency’s control.

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The past year reinforced the importance of competent stewardship. Under Farley, the Department of Labor handled the indispensable work that keeps North Carolina’s economy moving while maintaining the crucial balance between worker protections and fairness to employers. But his tenure also underscored how much authority rests in one statewide office, and how differently that authority might have been wielded had November 2024 broken the other way.

For business leaders, this should be both reassuring and clarifying. The state retained a regulator committed to balance and predictability, and the department he leads now has the bandwidth to do even more. As lawmakers continue evaluating where best to place key regulatory functions across state government, the Department of Labor may soon find itself playing an even larger role.