Who’s Working for You?

The following first appeared in the opinion sections of Hearst Connecticut Media newspapers.

---

Connecticut stands at an economic crossroads. The choices we make over the next year will determine where businesses invest and whether families can build a future here. 

Let’s start with the numbers, because they tell a story that’s more complicated than a single headline can capture. 

There are real signs of strength. Economic growth was 12^th fastest in the country in 2025, with additional growth in the first quarter of this year. The construction, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors are adding jobs at a strong pace. 

Wages remain among the highest in the country. Our world-class companies compete and win globally. That doesn’t happen by accident. 

It’s a reflection of the resilience and commitment of our businesses and their employees. 

Throw a workforce shortage at businesses, and they’ll adapt, transform, and reimagine the work. Supply chain disruptions? They’ll diversify and build in resilience. Add cost hikes, and they’ll keep sharpening the pencil. 

But those pencils are getting pretty blunt. Connecticut businesses can’t absorb rising costs indefinitely, while the state’s significant structural challenges should concern every person in the state. 

‘A People Crisis’

At the top of the list is our rapidly shrinking labor force. Over the past year, tens of thousands of people are no longer working or looking for work here. Put another way, we have effectively lost the population of East Hartford in the last 12 months alone. 

At the same time, employers are advertising more than 86,000 open positions. This is not a jobs crisis in the traditional sense—this is a people crisis. We have the jobs. We don’t have enough workers to fill those positions. 

Why? There’s more than one reason. Connecticut has one of the oldest workforces in the nation, and as experienced workers retire, there’s not enough younger workers following them. Population growth has slowed. And the cost of living, long an obstacle to growth, continues to climb.  

Too many families say the cost of housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare makes it harder every year to make Connecticut work for them.

Too many working families—people who want to build their lives and careers here—say the cost of housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare makes it harder every year to make Connecticut work for them. 

Federal policies and geopolitical turmoil are certainly not making it any easier to live and work in Connecticut.  

But we can’t use what’s happening in Washington or the rest of the world as an excuse for failing to address challenges that we can control. 

Cost of Living

Connecticut voters go to the polls this fall—early voting begins Oct. 19—to elect a governor, all statewide officers, and every seat in the General Assembly. 

This is a big election, and I encourage every voter to get engaged in the process and informed about the issues. 

CBIA’s role is not to tell you who to vote for—instead, we’ll share what we hear from business leaders and their employees, and it should sound familiar to you all: affordability is the defining issue of this election. 

Poll after poll—including the CBIA Foundation’s first-ever consumer outlook survey, released earlier this month—show that the state’s high cost of living is the top concern for voters of all political stripes and persuasion.  

The affordability debate is happening right now, in the governor’s race, in the campaigns for other statewide offices, and in legislative districts across the state. 

Whatever your politics, hold every candidate—regardless of the position they’re seeking—accountable to the same basic test. 

Will their policies make it easier or harder for a family to stay in Connecticut and build a life?  

Will they make it easier or harder for a business to hire, grow, and keep good jobs here? 

This is not an either-or issue. This is a we issue. 

Policy Solutions

Our challenges are solvable, and Connecticut has solved hard problems before—by working together, setting clear priorities, and demanding accountability.  

This week, CBIA launched a major statewide issues campaign called Who’s Working for You? 

The campaign is sharing a range of tools and resources so people can have the right conversations with candidates—and hold them accountable. 

Those resources include CBIA’s 2026 legislative scorecards—released earlier this month—that illustrate how lawmakers voted on this year’s most consequential affordability and economic growth policy decisions. 

Those scorecards also recognize some lawmakers as affordability champions—critical recognition, because we need more elected officials willing to fight for the types of solutions that residents and businesses desperately need.  

Connecticut’s residents and businesses have demonstrated that they can adapt, compete, and grow in times of extraordinary uncertainty. 

Now we need policy solutions that match that resilience and ambition. 

---

About the author: Chris DiPentima is the president and CEO of CBIA, the state’s largest business organization.