Despite some gains, CT state government hiring still doesn’t match population's diversity
An drone view of the Connecticut state Capitol building in Hartford. While the exact number is not yet known, officials say they are preparing for a surge in state employee retirements by July 2022.
Patrick Sikes / For Hearst Connecticut MediaConnecticut’s state government is significantly less racially and ethnically diverse than the state’s population, and though agencies have made gains in hiring more equitably overall, they have continued to bring on a slightly higher share of white employees than the state’s population.
What’s more, a review of state employee demographic data by Hearst Connecticut Media Group shows some agencies have struggled much more so than others when it comes to improving diversity in recent years.
“There are agencies that have stubborn problems with representation,” said Mohamad Alkadry, head of the University of Connecticut’s Dept. of Public Policy.
Alkadry co-authored a report on the issue with officials from the state Comptroller’s office, which provided the data to the newspaper group.
The study, released in January, found the hiring done by Connecticut state agencies in the last five years improved upon the diversity of the state workforce on the whole, but disparities persisted and performance varied widely by agency. The report also found disparities in pay based on race and gender.
The findings come at a critical time. State officials are bracing for an expected surge in retirements this summer due to a mix of pandemic burnout, changing pension rules, and other factors.
That is expected to leave thousands of vacancies in state government, creating some turmoil but also an opportunity to rebalance the workforce. A legislative task force studying how to make state government better reflect the people it serves last week outlined a series of recommendations toward that goal.
For now, more than three quarters of state workers – about 77 percent – were white, as of early 2021. By comparison, roughly two-thirds of Connecticut residents are white, according to U.S. Census Bureau data on adults from the latest Decennial Census.
Looking closer, the ranks of white and Black workers in state government are higher than the Connecticut population overall, the report showed. But Asian workers, and especially Hispanic workers, remain underrepresented.
Alkadry said that, relatively speaking, compared with other states, Connecticut’s state workforce is fairly reflective of its overall population, and there are signs of improvement.
Still, when it comes to new hires in recent years, the state has been unable to even match the racial and ethnic diversity of the state overall. In the five years leading up to 2021, 71 percent of state government hires were white, the report found.
“The problems get bigger when you start looking agency-by-agency,” Alkadry said.
Some of the deepest divisions found are in police and protective services, as well as the Dept. of Transportation, data shows.
The legislative task force, chaired by Rep. Robyn Porter, D-New Haven, voted Tuesday to adopt a number of recommendations to address gaps, including creating a chief diversity officer role at every agency and instituting exit surveys for the employees who retire.
Tara Downes, assistant state comptroller and the report’s co-author, said improving diversity has to be taken on at the highest level of every state agency.
“There is not a one-size-fits-all approach,” she said.
Slow changes in policing
Among large state employers, Police Services — which is largely composed of the State Police force — has the greatest share of white male employees, according to data provided to Hearst Connecticut Media by the Comptroller’s Office.
Seventy-one percent of employees are white men, and 81 percent men of any race. In the last five years, the picture improved somewhat, as 65 percent of people who were hired as state-employed police officers were white men.
Hiring women remains a stubborn challenge. Fewer than 2 percent of its workforce are Black women, for example, one of the lowest figures across state government.
A State Police spokesman said the agency is well aware of, and committed to correcting, the issue.
Sgt. Joungsuk Moon, who works in recruiting for the State Police, said it can be a tall order to convince people with no police or military background to go through rigorous training and transition into a career in law enforcement.
“You do have to adjust your whole lifestyle,” she said. “Your schedule may be different, you might have childcare issues, and you have to understand that your family has to support you throughout the beginning of your career. There's a lot of different challenges you have to overcome in the first couple years.”
Recruiting was further strained recently with many in-person efforts derailed by the pandemic.
Still, the State Police has focused on attending in-person events in predominantly minority communities, and the last three academy classes have been the agency’s most diverse yet, both in terms of race and gender, the agency said.
Sgt. Dawn Pagan, a public information officer, worked in the State Police’s narcotics unit for years, an office she described as “gritty” and typically male-dominated. She said representation in narcotics, and across the agency, has slowly shifted.
“I've seen it change over time,” Pagan said. “Now you're seeing that women are more represented in that unit.”
However, fast changes are unlikely to come to the gender and racial makeup of the State Police. Police forces nationwide have struggled to increase diversity for years.
Departures to create opportunity for transportation agency
A Boston Consulting Group report diagnosing the state workforce’s looming retirement issue found at the Department of Transportation, close to a third of all employees could be eligible to retire this year, one of the highest percentages across the state’s executive branch.
The agency has among the most room to improve in representation.
For instance, at the department’s Bureau of Highway Operations, 68 percent of workers were white men, as of March 2021. Just 7 percent were women. Numbers shifted only marginally toward a more diverse staff in five years, during which time the office brought on 400 hires.
Other components of the transportation agency improved more: At the Bureau of Engineering and Construction, 67 percent of new hires were white, compared to 77 percent of the office’s workforce.
Estiana Green, who leads diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the Bureau of Engineering and Construction, said the numbers from the Comptroller’s Office report don’t come as a surprise.
Green said in the last two years, the office committed to going above and beyond the requirements of its affirmative action plans. One challenge is the low proportion of women going to school for jobs in the transportation sector. Green said the department’s female workforce matches the numbers in school, about 18 percent.
“The fact of the matter is that historically, the transportation industry has been a white male-dominated industry. But that’s changing, and we’re aware that it’s changing,” she said. “We need to move forward and go further.”
Green said the agency is already implementing some of the legislative task force’s recommendations.
Some agencies fare better
Christine Jean-Louis, a state assistant attorney general and president of the union for assistant attorney generals, outlined an opposite trend in her profession, with increasing numbers of women, people of color, LGBTQ+ or people with a disability enrolling in law school.
The Attorney General’s Office is already quite diverse relative to other state offices.
Thirty percent of its staff are white men; Black and Hispanic women together make up 17 percent of the office, according to the Comptroller’s Office report, which is above the average in state government.
“Having our diversity be reflective from the bottom, middle and top is the biggest factor that makes the AG’s Office a more diverse employer relative to others in state government and even the legal profession at large,” Jean-Louis said. “That consistency, covering two administrations, gives us leverage to recruit and retain new hires.”
However, Jean-Louis said the agency will not let its guard down when it comes to hiring diversely, pointing to how an unprecedented number of attorneys are likely to retire this year.
State jobs an opportunity
A state job can bring stability, said Tara Keaton, a supervisor with the Department of Correction, something that could and should be advertised to people as an opportunity.
Keaton said her job was transformational for her life. She said the job kept her out of poverty and provided an education for her children.
Still, Keaton said it is difficult for women to “elevate” in managerial positions in her field, in large part because it has traditionally been viewed as a masculine job.
“My authority is challenged,” she said. “Some people don't accept my advice. If I make a decision, then some won’t accept it.”
Keaton’s union, CSEA SEIU Local 2001, represents a wide range of state employees. Keaton and the union are advocating for specific improvements, including a universal zero-tolerance policy that would protect employees who complain about discrimination.
Keaton said the state’s current affirmative action policies also fail to fully address diversity and equity, a problem she said is evident at — but not limited to — the Department of Corrections, and can affect who gets promoted and who doesn’t.
Alkadry, the report’s co-author, said quantifying who is being favored for promotion and advancement is difficult.
Keaton also said expected retirements will likely hit managers in her department particularly hard. Departures in the agency could total close to 1,000 by June, according to the Boston Consulting Group report.
On the whole, the agency is one of Connecticut’s more diverse: 57 percent of its workforce in 2021 was white. A spokeswoman for the agency said 72 percent of people brought on during the last three hiring rounds, all during 2021, were people of color.
Looking closer at certain facilities, there are wider divisions. For example, employees at the Brooklyn Correctional Institution, near the Rhode Island border, are 95 percent white. An agency spokeswoman explained that, due to stipulations in union contracts, employees have wide latitude over which facility they can choose to work, meaning the agency has less control over demographic representation at each prison.
Pay disparities
In some cases, disparities in the ranks of state workers are also reflected in wage gaps, the new report shows.
For instance, Hispanic women in top positions in the state were paid 73 percent of the salaries of their white male counterparts. A report by the same authors, published in 2019, found that across the state workforce, disparities as high as $10,000 in annual pay persist.
Downes, from the Comptroller’s office, said the coming wave of retirements could offer possibilities to further improve diversity and equity within the workforce, she said.
“Connecticut is on the verge of a transformational moment as an employer,” she said. “It’s an exciting and a scary moment.”
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