The 2025-26 Budget: Concession Bargaining

May 19, 2025 - Most state employees earn a pension. The pension that an employee receives in retirement depends on the pension formula they earned during their career. The specific pension formula that an employee earns depends on their job and when they were hired.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5047

State Options to Expand Unemployment Benefits

Apr 9, 2020 - The state could set benefit amounts based on earnings for workers who are able to document earnings. For all other workers, the state could set a minimum benefit amount. Workers who can demonstrate earnings would receive the minimum benefit and the benefit based on prior earnings.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4219

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 6 (Corrections)

Sep 7, 2023 - (CalHR informs us that the state briefly contributed a small specified dollar amount to excluded employees ’ Savings Plus accounts in the early 2000s.) In 2017, we issued a report evaluating the Savings Plus program.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4800

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 8 (Firefighters)

Aug 19, 2025 - Employees in different bargaining units who have similar jobs (for example, public safety classifications like peace officers and firefighters) earn compensation packages with similar components. For example, while the specific structure of the benefit varies, public safety employees generally earn pension benefits that are designed to offer a higher annuity to retirees at an earlier age.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5066

Savings Plus Program: An Optional Retirement Benefit for State Employees

Mar 14, 2017 - In addition, these employees have no rights to the money they contributed to the retiree health trust fund over the course of their state career —potentially tens of thousands of dollars —or any of the earnings gained on these contributions.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3616

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 6

Jun 14, 2019 - Part of the state ’s contribution goes towards the “normal cost ” —the amount of money that actuaries determine is necessary (combined with assumed future investment earnings) to pay the cost of pension benefits that employees earn in a given year.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4078

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Units 1, 3, 4, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21

Jan 10, 2017 - Because the state ’s retiree health benefit is the same for an employee earning $30,000 as it is for an employee earning $100,000, the amount of money needed to prefund the benefit represents a larger share of a lower-income worker ’s salary.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3520

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 6 (Corrections)

May 30, 2018 - Retiree health normal cost is estimated by actuaries as a dollar amount. The administration then takes its assumption of pay in the year of the valuation to estimate the normal cost as a percentage of pay.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/3847

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 18 (Psychiatric Technicians)

Jan 9, 2020 - We estimate that extending the provisions of the agreement to excluded employees could increase annual state costs by a few million dollars by 2021 ‑22. Pay Increases Most Recent Compensation Study From 2019.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4134

MOU Fiscal Analysis: Bargaining Unit 9 (Professional Engineers)

Jun 27, 2025 - Under state law, vacation or annual leave is considered a form of wages that is vested when earned. As such, employers cannot adopt a “use it or lose it ” policy for earned employee vacation and annual leave whereby unused vacation or annual leave above a certain level is forfeited at the end of the year.
https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5061