The Georgia Labor Commissioner is the southern state’s top official overseeing labor- and employment-related programs. The Department of Labor carries out state and federal laws related to employment, workplace safety, training, and disability and rehabilitation. Generally, officials in this role act as a key voice in policy-making discussions on the issues facing workers, employers, and businesses. These officials also promote programs that aim to increase the skills and competence of workers so that they can, in turn, improve their effectiveness at work and improve the overall productivity of the economy.
The Department of Labor has about 4,000 employees serving 159 counties. The Commissioner’s office is headquartered in Atlanta, and has offices providing services across the state. There are 53 career centers for employment services, 50 vocational rehabilitation offices for workers with disabilities, and 45 one-stop centers focused on workforce education and training.
This Georgian office also serves as the conduit with the United States’ Labor Department. They coordinate with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, and the federal Wage and Hour Division.
Many Georgians seek out services related to unemployment benefits. The agency coordinates the delivery of funds to those who are out of work. It also provides information on training and services to help job seekers. This service area has been very busy during the Great Recession. The current unemployment rate in the State has hovered around 10 percent.
Georgia’s Workforce Information and Analysis unit focuses its energy on tracking and presenting information related to the people and the work that they do. The unit provides a number of prospectus documents that address the short- and long-term forecasts for job opportunities in different industrial sectors. The unit also researches and presents data on employment development and training, and other materials that are of interest to those specialists in workforce planning and analysis.
Georgia addresses a number of occupational health and safe-work projects of interest to employees and their places of business. One of their projects is a volunteer cooperative made-up of educational institutions, civic institutions, and commercial institutions – together they provide voluntary services to companies aimed at creating safer workplaces. They also have a partnership affiliated with Georgia Tech University to provide safety consultancy services; and they make available significant amounts of rules related to chemicals, bungee jumping, amusement parks, and industrial HVAC.
The Labor Commissioner is an elected officer in the State of Georgia. Like many other states, Georgia has an elected governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. But they also elect a number of specialized, regulatory executives who oversee important administrative functions, including labor and employment, insurance industry regulation, and agriculture. The current Georgia Labor Commissioner, Michael Thurmond, was first elected in 1998 and is a Democrat.
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