Jobs

[nathanm]

Well, that was disappointing. Unfortunately, Obama blames Congress for the wrong reasons.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/president-obama-blames-congress-weak-jobs-report/story?id=16476623#.T8knpi3z4gg

Not that Romney, or even news reporters are doing much better:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipAvqXoUxFfrH91ahL1aykAAtXOw?docId=CNG.62d0f7886ec7a5611055131eca72feed.311

The problem, you idiots (I refer to the pols and the reporters), is that government is still bleeding jobs. We have now exceeded three years of declining government employment. Great, you say? Maybe not so great in the middle of an effing jobless "recovery" when it's hard enough to find private sector work! Money is flowing rather rapidly towards the federal government at negative freakin' real interest. Why, then, do we insist on kneecapping ourselves?

Oh, that's right, forcing government spending and employment down makes the economy look worse and helps Romney's chances of getting elected. And some folks didn't believe them when they said their primary goal was getting rid of Obama...

[Teatownclown]

GOP economic sabotage...If Romney is elected (he won't be), they'll happily raise the debt ceiling 19 times like they did for Ronnie.

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."-- Senate minority leader Mitch the bitchMcConnell, 2010.

[Conan71]

GOP economic sabotage...If Romney is elected (he won't be), they'll happily raise the debt ceiling 19 times like they did for Ronnie.

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."-- Senate minority leader Mitch the bitchMcConnell, 2010.

You guys are funny.  You would have laughed off such a claim in the run-up to the '08 election. 

The real shame is no one is concerned about governing anymore, it's only about power.

[nathanm]

The real shame is no one is concerned about governing anymore, it's only about powerfunneling the public treasury into private hands.

FTFY.

[Conan71]

FTFY.

I was going to say that but figured I'd leave it for someone else to fill in the blank.  Couldn't agree more.

[Teatownclown]

You guys are funny.  You would have laughed off such a claim in the run-up to the '08 election. 

The real shame is no one is concerned about governing anymore, it's only about DISLODGING power.

[nathanm]

I was going to say that but figured I'd leave it for someone else to fill in the blank.  Couldn't agree more.

At least we agree on one of the problems, if not the solution. It's a start.

[Gaspar]

The problem, you idiots (I refer to the pols and the reporters), is that government is still bleeding jobs. We have now exceeded three years of declining government employment.

You miss the point.  Well you miss many, but the point here is that this administration focused it's recovery efforts upon temporary projects, government contracts, failed Democrat spending initiatives, increased regulation, untested green initiatives, and not on private sector growth.  They took every opportunity to position themselves as anti-business, anti-wealth, anti-banking, anti-investing, anti-energy, and pro-redistribution.

Had they spurred private sector growth and worked with free-market principals instead of promoting an agenda of selectivism, this conversation would not be necessary.

I don't know why I'm writing this. . .you hate us "free-marketers."  The President has taken the exact corse of action you believe in.  You should be proud.

[nathanm]

You miss the point.  Well you miss many, but the point here is that this administration focused it's recovery efforts upon temporary projects, government contracts, failed Democrat spending initiatives, increased regulation, untested green initiatives, and not on private sector growth.  They took every opportunity to position themselves as anti-business, anti-wealth, anti-banking, anti-investing, anti-energy, and pro-redistribution.

This is entirely delusional.

Had they spurred private sector growth and worked with free-market principals instead of promoting an agenda of selectivism, this conversation would not be necessary.

Apparently, you can't read, either. There is in fact private sector growth. The problem is that government shrinkage is offsetting it and then some. That is not helpful to a recovery, no matter how much money we pump into the economy. Did you forget that half of the stimulus was tax cuts and not spending? Given the way you talk about tax cuts as if you were talking about Jesus healing the lame, I would think that nearly half a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts would have done something. Somehow that doesn't count as a failure?

[Conan71]

How much of the government job loss is federal vs. local or state?  Income, property, and sales tax receipts falling would have far more to do with public sector job loss- a direct result of less spending, lower real estate values, and localized unemployment from the private sector. 

[nathanm]

How much of the government job loss is federal vs. local or state?  Income tax and sales tax receipts falling would have far more to do with public sector job loss- a direct result of less spending and localized unemployment from the private sector.

Federal employment is up slightly since 2006. That includes USPS and other quasi-governmental agencies. By slightly I mean 40,000-50,000. State/local employment is down a couple million. The government job/population ratio is back to where it was in 1984. It's actually quite interesting to see the dip at the end of the 70s and then the rise starting in the early-mid 80s.

Before the recession, there was 1 government job per 13.6 people in the US. There is now less than 1 per 14.25. The pre-recession number was slightly higher than the post-1980 norm, but only a hair. Generally speaking, government jobs increase vaguely in proportion to population, or at least have since the rise of the modern state after WWII. For all their grandstanding, Republicans haven't done smile about it, unless they are true Machiavellian geniuses, in which case they clearly engineered the financial crisis to force government cutbacks.

[erfalf]

nathan:

Based on your statistics it looks like most(all) of the government job losses have been and the local/state level. At this level, they don't have a choice. If it isn't in the budget it gets cut. State governments cannot borrow to fund it's operations, unlike the federal government. Not really sure what could have been done about it really. There are always going to be economic cycles.

[nathanm]

Based on your statistics it looks like most(all) of the government job losses have been and the local/state level. At this level, they don't have a choice. If it isn't in the budget it gets cut. State governments cannot borrow to fund it's operations, unlike the federal government. Not really sure what could have been done about it really. There are always going to be economic cycles.

Many states can and do run deficits for a time. Obviously, unlike the federal government, there are significant limits on their debt capacity. I wasn't necessarily saying that we should be having the federal government borrow more to give to the states, anyway. I don't think it would be a bad idea, but it's not something I think is worth spending political capital on at this point. To some degree they're doing it to themselves anyway. Idiotic development giveaways amounting to at least $70 billion a year are the rope they've used to hang themselves.

My point was more to communicate what I thought most news stories failed to make plain. Private sector job growth, while not fantastic, was up over 100,000 jobs on the month by the BLS numbers, while the ADP count was 133,000. Again, not great, but not the doom and gloom scenario painted by the press and by the Romney campaign. In the face of what is universally regarded as weak demand and the ongoing Euro turmoil dragging down the mood, those are pretty good numbers.

Imagine what we could do if we took advantage of low rates and committed to spend $100 billion a year on infrastructure repair for the next 4-5 years. That should be long enough to help fix the household balance sheet problem and give some confidence to employers that the new level of activity will not be short term. We can borrow that for effectively nothing. If we also set out to eliminate tax noncompliance we would gain enough revenue to pay for the spending. No need of a rate increase, just stop letting people get away with tax evasion.

[Oil Capital]

There is in fact private sector growth. The problem is that government shrinkage is offsetting it and then some. That is not helpful to a recovery, no matter how much money we pump into the economy.

Source?  Links?   

This left-wing website says we lost 600,000 public sector jobs in the last three years.  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/04/09/460380/worst-ever-public-sector-job-loss/  A healthy private sector recovery would replace those jobs in 3 months or less.  If that 600,000 jobs lost offsets private sector growth over the past three years, we are in a worse mess than we thought.

[nathanm]

FRED is your friend.

Does this look significantly different than the last recovery, which came after a much milder recession and without the ridiculousness in the eurozone?



Edited to add: Note the difference between "since the recession began" and "in the last three years". Local governments alone have shed more than a half million jobs since the recession began and are continuing to do so.