SALT LAKE CITY -- The state has laid off 71 employees since lawmakers first started cutting the budget last fall, a report shows, but a state official said the worst should be over.

"There still may be a few here and there," said Jeff Herring, head of the Utah Department of Human Resource Management, which released the report on the layoffs Tuesday at the request of the Deseret News. "Unless things change with the budget, I think we've seen the bulk of them."

The Utah Public Employees Association is still wary.

Workers continue to worry about their job security, said Todd Sutton, an employee representative with the association.

"The bottom line is we just don't know," Sutton said.

The state employs nearly 23,000 people, and the layoffs represent less than half a percent of the state's work force.

Still, officials say getting laid off is always hard.

"There's always the assumption that if you work for the state, your job is generally safe," said Tom Hudachko, a spokesman for the Utah Department of Health, where a dozen of its nearly 1,000 employees have been laid off since April.

The Department of Human Services lost 20 of 5,000 jobs to layoffs.

"Definitely, a lot of employees have had some concern and probably there's been some fear," said department spokeswoman Elizabeth Sollis. "It's a process that hasn't been easy, obviously, for anyone."

All 71 laid-off employees came from the executive branch. They were among the more than 16,000 merit employees subject to the state's reduction-in-force procedure.

Lawmakers have twice cut the state budget in the past year due to the economic downturn. And Sutton's concern is that next year Utah won't have the benefit of federal stimulus money.

"Our worry is that what really saved the state this year was the federal stimulus money," Sutton said. "Once that runs out, whatever decisions they don't make this year, they'll have to make next year."