Trailing 20 points in race for governor, Ryan Fazio makes jobs pitch

Connecticut has 86,000 jobs just waiting to be filled. So what are the candidates for governor going to do about it? John Craven tells us. You might say Asim Hazelwood was born to be an electrician. Came from a family with my father, pretty much. He's been a journeyman for pretty much all my entire life. Connecticut desperately needs skilled workers. The state's unemployment rate is just above 5%, the highest in the Northeast, and nearly 1% above the national average. Connecticut's state government needs to do more. Republican Ryan Fazio now calling for more apprenticeships, where students like these get on-the-job training in exchange for lower pay. The governor's been nowhere on this. The trades, the employers are asking to create more apprenticeships, and they're standing in the way of opportunity for people. There's definitely concerns about workers being exploited. The cap is where it should be because you need apprentices to come in and not just be used and churned out for cheap labor. Fazio also wants bigger tax breaks for manufacturers to expand. Governor Lamont says he's done many of those things, including cutting licensing fees for more than a dozen jobs. We have things like Career Connect, which has shoveled thousands of workers into job training programs and gotten them into good-paying jobs. Lamont is also launching a new artificial intelligence academy for students. So everybody agrees this is lamp one. But Hazelwood hopes this job is AI-proof. I feel it would be much easier if you have a trade or something under your belt, some type of certificate, for you to find a job. Jobs that need workers. In Shelton, John Craven, News 12. A new Quinnipiac poll gives Governor Lamont a big and growing lead. 58% of voters support Lamont, while 38% are backing Ryan Fazio. Only 3% were undecided. 30% of voters said they didn't know enough about Fazio to have an opinion on him.