Nine Months in: Commissioner Luke Farley’s Balanced Approach is Defining his Tenure

Good morning. Thank you for joining us this Saturday morning.

We’ve had the pleasure of introducing you to several of North Carolina’s statewide elected officials over the last several months, like Governor Josh Stein and State Treasurer Brad Briner. Today, we are turning our attention to the youngest member of North Carolina’s Council of State: Commissioner of Labor Luke Farley.

When he took office in January, Commissioner Farley became the youngest person to oversee state worker protections in more than a century. And he is already making an impact on our state’s workforce and business climate.

Born and raised in Onslow County, North Carolina, Farley graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied law at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem. As an attorney in private practice, he specialized in workplace safety law, an experience that put Commissioner Farley on both sides of the table with injured workers and small businesses alike.

In 2024, Farley entered his first campaign for public office, defeating former Charlotte City Council Member Braxton Winston with 53% of the vote. Farley’s campaign message was simple: “Make North Carolina the safest place to work AND the best place to do business.”

Endorsed by his predecessors, Cherie Berry and Josh Dobson, Farley pitched himself to voters as a pro-worker, pro-business conservative who understood the stakes both in terms of safety and red tape. By contrast, as we’ve covered in the past, recent Democratic nominees for commissioner of labor, like Braxton Winston in 2024 and Jessica Holmes in 2020, leaned heavily on activist support and union ties. In Winston’s case, since his defeat in 2024, he’s gone on to become president of North Carolina’s AFL-CIO chapter, the state’s largest federation of labor unions.

Almost ten months into his term, Commissioner Farley has already delivered significant accomplishments for our state’s workers and businesses. In July, he announced that the Department of Labor recovered more than $2.5 million in unpaid wages for North Carolina’s workers. This came as an early sign that his approach to enforcement would mean not just rhetoric, but real outcomes. 

This hands-on approach from Farley and the DOL has paid off elsewhere, as well. In August, Commissioner Farley’s Department of Labor uncovered an illegally operating mine in Western North Carolina and partnered with other state agencies and the federal government to shut it down. This illegal operation has since been denied permitting requests as a result of Farley and the DOL’s investigation. Farley’s actions in this instance reassure NC’s business community that well-run and compliant operators can have confidence that they won’t be undermined by those who cheat the system.

And Farley hasn’t shied away from daunting challenges, either. Due to its status as a transportation hub, North Carolina is one of the top corridors in the country for human trafficking. Working with law enforcement partners and the hospitality industry across the state, Commissioner Farley unveiled a new online portal to help lodging and vacation rental operators fight human trafficking and catch those who facilitate it. 

This new tool offers training, reporting guidance, and other resources to help hospitality industry partners better combat this problem across North Carolina. And it has earned early industry accolades as well. The North Carolina Hospitality Alliance applauded Commissioner Farley’s work to establish this much-needed portal earlier this year.

Commissioner Farley has also enacted a 3% pay raise for experienced workplace safety inspectors who have served the state for more than three years. This initiative is part of his broader plan to protect workers by filling open inspector positions and cutting wait times for voluntary safety consultations, as well as boosting recognition for effective workplace safety programs. Rather than ignoring the problem of vacancies, Farley is investing in frontline inspectors, showing that protecting workers begins with investing in the people who do it every day. 

Thanks in part to his pragmatic approach, Commissioner Farley is already at the center of one national narrative. North Carolina regained its top spot in CNBC’s “Best States for Business” ranking in 2025, a recognition built on our workforce, talent pipeline, infrastructure, and tax climate. That kind of recognition depends on balanced, practical leadership — not a commissioner who’s incentivized, as Winston and Jessica Holmes were, to advance activist and union agendas over the state’s business climate.

At the same time, Farley’s largest criticisms stem from the activist group Oxfam’s claims that North Carolina is the worst state in the country for workers. Because the data tells a different story, Commissioner Farley pushed back, telling Axios: “Oxfam is out of touch with the realities on the ground … North Carolina is a place that people see as a land of opportunity.” 

The facts support him here. North Carolina’s unemployment rate is below the national average, and employers report our state has one of the highest rates of job openings in the country. North Carolina was also one of the top states for net migration last year, and average weekly wages here also rose 5.8%, the 12th-largest increase in the country.

As for Oxfam, describing them as unbiased would be a stretch. Oxfam is a confederation of global activists, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. Its U.S. affiliate is based in Boston and led by Abby Maxman, a liberal activist with extensive progressive connections and a record of Democratic Party contributions. Oxfam supports George Soros’ $100 billion climate-financing agenda and has routinely published statements accusing Israel of genocide. These are the kinds of details you won’t often see mentioned in most of the political media coverage of Oxfam’s reports here in North Carolina.

Oxfam has also been plagued by other serious internal and public controversies over the years. The organization was embroiled in a scandal in 2018 when British news outlets The Times and the BBC reported NCthat Oxfam staff had hired sex workers in the aftermath of a 2010 earthquake in Haiti, describing the controversy as an example of “the dark underbelly of international aid charities.”

All this to say, any research from Oxfam should be understood in its context, and in the agenda it stems from. Between flawed methodology and a spotty and controversial record of staffing and operations, Oxfam’s analysis of North Carolina’s business climate hardly carries any weight. 

Fortunately, North Carolina’s business community is more interested in impact and results than in flawed surveys from activist groups. And through his term so far, Commissioner Farley has worked diligently on behalf of both workers and businesses alike to ensure that North Carolina offers the best climate for business in the country. This pragmatic, common-sense approach will position our state well for years to come. With opponents like Winston now openly leading organized labor’s push in North Carolina, Farley’s balanced, pro-worker and pro-business approach stands in even sharper relief, and we will all be following his progress with great interest.