For Delaware to Grow, We Need Federal and State Permitting Reforms

Delaware’s economy is sending a warning signal that policymakers cannot ignore. According to the Delaware Department of Labor December 2025 Monthly Labor Review, the state’s unemployment rate was 5.2% in December, up from 3.6% a year earlier and higher than the national rate of 4.4%.

Those unemployment figures don’t tell the whole story. Other official data show a broader problem:

• Federal Reserve data show Delaware's Labor force participation rate has fallen to 59.4%, meaning more than four in 10 working-age residents are outside the labor force, not working and not looking for work.

  
  

• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national labor force participation rate is 62.4%.

  
  

• If Delaware’s workforce participated at the same rate as the rest of the country, the unemployment rate would be closer to 10%—roughly 27,000 additional Delawareans who would be working or looking for work instead of being out of the labor force.

Those missing workers are a warning sign that the labor market is not working well for many Delawareans. How Delaware reviews and approves new projects is one of the tools the state can use to change that. Delaware’s leaders have begun to acknowledge the problem. In February 2026, Gov. Matt Meyer signed Executive Order 18, creating a “Permitting Accelerator” to coordinate agency reviews and fast-track housing, energy, and infrastructure projects.

The State is Already Acting

Executive Order 18 states plainly that timelines have “often stretched 18 to 24 months or longer, increasing project costs, discouraging private investment, constraining housing supply, and slowing delivery of essential infrastructure.”

The pressures behind the order are real:

• Delaware imports roughly three-fifths of its electricity from out-of-state suppliers, having retired significant generation capacity over the past two decades.

  
  

• The state’s Affordable Housing Task Force found a shortage of 45,000 housing units.

  
  

• Construction costs in Sussex County can be around $475,000 for a basic single-family home—beyond what working families can afford.

  
  

• One of the task force’s central recommendations: streamline the permitting process.

In this environment, lawmakers cannot afford business as usual. To support long‑term growth, Delaware lawmakers should write the new Permitting Accelerator into state law, and Delaware’s congressional delegation should support federal permitting reforms that set clear, enforceable timelines for major projects.

An Executive Order is Not Enough

Executive Order 18 is an important step, but not a permanent solution. An Executive Order can be revoked by a later governor, so it should be enacted into law by the General Assembly. Additionally, Delaware should advocate for federal permitting reform.

No matter how much Delaware streamlines its own processes, major infrastructure—power generation, transmission, broadband, and any project touching federal land, waterways, or funding—must still go through a federal review system that has become a source of litigation and indefinite delays.

The Federal Bottleneck

The central problem is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Signed in 1970, NEPA was designed to inform federal decision-making, not to provide endless opportunities for obstruction. Today, it does exactly that. A McKinsey & Co. analysis reports roughly 30% of projects undergoing a full Environmental Impact Statement face litigation, and energy and infrastructure projects routinely spend four and a half years or more in the federal permitting process, according to American Clean Power.

Those delays add up. Analysts at McKinsey also estimate that projects currently stuck in federal review represent enough generating capacity to power 38 to 54 million American households.

Delaware cannot afford to be trapped in that line. The state has no nuclear generation and its last coal plant closed in 2025. Legislators from both parties have begun studying small modular reactors and other alternatives—but any new generation project of meaningful scale requires federal permits, federal environmental review, and federal interconnection approvals that can take the better part of a decade.

Delaware can pass all the energy legislation it wants; if the federal system cannot process the applications, shovels do not go into the ground.

The case for reform has moved beyond argument. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the bipartisan SPEED Act. According to a Bloomberg Law report, through reconciliation, Congress has begun setting enforceable timelines—an environmental assessment within 180 days, a full impact statement within one year. Polling by the Bipartisan Policy Center found Americans support streamlining the permitting process by a margin of 61 to 13%. This is not a close call. Delaware’s leaders should be among those pressing to turn that momentum into lasting law.

What’s at Stake

For Delaware, the stakes are 27,000 working-age residents who have dropped out of the labor force, 45,000 housing units the state cannot build fast enough, and three-fifths of our electricity imported because we lack the capacity to power our own economy. Every month a project sits in review, is a month a home is not built and a Delawarean who could be working is not.

Delaware has already admitted that slow permitting is holding it back. Now it needs to lock in state reforms and demand a federal system that decides projects on a clear timeline. If Delaware is going to comp