Applications for relief from Connecticut’s apprentice hiring ratio in the building trades have increased since a new law went into effect on October 1, 2025. That law reformed the process by which trades companies can apply to waive Connecticut’s apprentice-to-licensed contractor hiring ratio, but to date, the approval rate is roughly the same as under previous guidelines.
The Department of Consumer Protection (DCP) has received just over 50 applications for apprentice ratio relief since a new law went into effect last October and has approved roughly 90 percent of applications received.
Many states have a ratio for the number of apprentices to licensed contractors who can work on construction job sites. Connecticut also has a ratio for the number of apprentices who can be hired. For businesses with up to three contractors, there’s a one-to-one ratio for the hiring of apprentices. For businesses with three or more contractors, there’s a three-to-one ratio for hiring apprentices.
The ratio applies to 80 different types of apprenticeships in construction, including electrical, plumbing, heating, piping, cooling, sprinkler fitting, and metalworking trades.
While the ratio has been an acknowledged problem, artificially capping the number of new construction workers who enter Connecticut’s workforce, the legislature had taken no action on numerous pieces of legislation to address the issue until 2025.
In June 2025, Gov. Ned Lamont signed a law attempting to address the issue by reforming the process by which companies can apply for “relief,” or hire additional apprentices outside of the ratio.
The bill changed the agency responsible for reviewing and making determinations on applications for ratio relief from the Department of Labor (DOL) to DCP. It also simplified the requirements for applying for relief and created conditions under which relief must be granted.
Previously, companies could not apply for apprentice relief unless they had advertised an open journeyman position on the government’s CTHires website for at least 30 days. They also had to provide a variety of information, including whether anyone involved in the company had been involved in various legal actions over the past five years, the educational background of apprentices for which companies were seeking relief, and wage and employment termination records for the same time period.
Under the new law, DCP officials have 10 days after receiving an application to issue a decision. The reporting period is shortened from five to three years and requires DCP to approve applications if hiring an additional apprentice does not exceed a one-to-one apprentice-to-journeyman ratio, the apprentice is enrolled in a qualified training program, and the contractor attests they are suffering “from an undue operational hardship due to the applicable allowable hiring ratio.”
The law allows contractors to apply to DCP to hire additional apprentices, up to 8 in total, outside the ratio if certain conditions are met, and requires, as with current ratio relief applications, that companies submit information about themselves and their hiring practices. Further, it codifies the ratio relief process, which was not previously outlined in state statute. Requests for more than eight licenses are reviewed by the relevant licensing board.
The law also specifies that applications will be rejected if a contractor employs more than a total of eight journeymen or if DOL has taken any enforcement action against them in the past three years.
Inside Investigator submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for application data DCP received since the new law went into effect last October.
According to the data provided, DCP received 55 applications between the effective date of the new law and mid-April 2026 from 44 different companies. 89 percent of requests were granted.
All five applications, coming from four different companies, that were rejected sought relief to hire more than eight additional apprentices, meaning the applications were reviewed by the relevant licensing board. Several subsequently submitted requests seeking relief for a smaller number of apprentices, which were later approved.
For example, BFZ Electric, LLC submitted a request seeking to hire an additional 14 apprentices, which would have created a one-to-one ratio with the number of journeymen employed at the time. That application was rejected, but they submitted a subsequent application seeking to hire an additional 8 apprentices, which was approved. The company had previously received ratio relief within the last three years, according to their application.
Several applications were still marked as “pending” in the data DCP provided.
Applications for ratio relief from electrical companies made up the majority of relief applications, at roughly 62 percent.
Though the program has only been in place for a few months, the available data suggests the new ratio relief rules are being used more frequently than in the past. In December 2024, the DOL told Inside Investigator that it had received 305 requests for relief since 2017, the last time the legislature changed the hiring ratio. During that time period, DOL approved roughly 90 percent of requests for relief.
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