Today's Employment Report: Since Jan. 2010, -500k Government Jobs, +2.5 Million Private Jobs
Scott Grannis points out today that "One of the healthiest features of this recovery continues: the public sector continues to lose jobs—about 600K since the recovery began. This is the most extended and the largest decline of public sector jobs since the 1980-82 recession. It is contributing to the unusually high and sticky unemployment rate, of course, but this is a good problem to have since the public sector had grown like Topsy in the years leading up to the last recession and needed to be cut back. A smaller public sector will eventually make it easier for the more-efficient private sector to grow."
Scott also comments that today's employment report "refutes (as have lots of numbers of late) any notion that the economy is slipping into another recession."
Likewise, Brian Wesbury and First Trust Portfolio comment today that "Investors have been grossly misled about the odds of a recession."
MP: The chart above displays monthly changes in private sector and government jobs starting in January 2007, and shows that since January 2010 government payrolls have contracted by 500,000 jobs while private sector employment has increased by more than 2.5 million jobs.
18 Comments:
Great to see the public jobs shrink, but still huge number of public jobs need to be eliminated, from Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, the VA and the USDA.
Employment by Agency
Department of Defense 3,000,000
Veterans Affairs 275,000
Homeland Security 250,000
Treasury 115,000
Justice 112,000
Energy 109,000
USDA 109,000
Interior 71,000
Labor 17,000
HUD 10,000
Education 4,487
I sense most jobs are being cut at state and local level, not federal.
Sadly, I don't think a party change will result in a meaningful decrease in federal employment--when an agency employs 3 million voters, and a few million more in the private contracting side, getting real cuts will be tough.
And the USDA dispenses direct money into rural districts---those Congressman are going to fight like devils to protect their lard. $32 billion to cotton farmers in direct outlays (subsidies) since 1995. Not tax subsidies--checks you can cash for money. Patronage or bribes for votes comes to mind.
But, nice to see public payrolls decline, The time bomb of public pensions is even worse---many uniformed federal employees can retire after only 20 years of service at full pension and extravagant medical benefits.
My guess is that the above topics have not been addressed at any Tea Party event. Perhaps by Ron Paul, my personal fave, but no one else.
U6 was 16.5%, the high for the year.
unemployed for over 26 weeks has barely budged odd the highs.
we are still, what, 6 million jobs shy of pre recession levels?
this is the longest, deepest employment downturn since ww2 and it's nothing like recovering.
http://cr4re.com/charts/charts.html#category=Employment&chart=PercentJobAlignedSept2011.jpg
u3 has barely made up 20% of its losses.
sure, it's a little better than it was, but as recoveries go, this is not even U shaped, it's closer to an L.
In September 2011, there were 140.503 million Americans working. In September 2010, there were 139.715 million Americans working. That is less than 800,000 jobs added in the year which is less that 70,000 jobs/mo for an entire year. Job growth is not even keeping up with population growth during this "recovery".
"...about 600K since the recovery began"...
What recovery?
Courtesy of Zer0hedge: US Needs To Generate 261,200 Jobs Per Month To Return To Pre-Depression Employment By End Of Obama Second Term
How can we have a recovery when we can't stop the parasitic bureaucrats?
E.U. can force U.S. airlines to buy carbon permits, court adviser says
"One of the healthiest features of this recovery continues: the public sector continues to lose jobs."
That's because the country is going broke from this train wreck.
What about losing Social Security. Is that also "healthy?"
The employment situation is worse now than at the trough of the recession, because 125,000 to 150,000 jobs are needed each month just to keep up with population growth.
Junkyard_hawg1985 is correct.
When the recession officially ended in June 2009, the number of employed Americans was 139.978 million (seasonally adjusted). In September 2011, the number was 140.025 million or an increase of less than 50,000 over a 27 month period. I think this is why Morganovich call this an "L" shaped recovery.
The number of "Part-Time for Economic Reasons" Workers has gone up by 874,000 in the Last Two Months.
BLS Data
Cheaper to have two part-time workers w/o health insurance than to employ One Full-time worker With Health Insurance.
I'm sure glad we're in "recovery."
I'd hate to see what a continuing recession would look like.
"What about losing Social Security. Is that also "healthy?""...
Yes, that would be a major monkey off of society's back...
Not a good comparison for govt jobs. Using the Grannis charts, I see that private jobs fell by 6 million from the peak, about 5%, while govt jobs only fell by 2.2%. We should have cut a lot more, and more importantly, not jacked up govt spending like the Democrats did. As for the recent jobs trend, it seems to be falling from the peak earlier this year. If uncorrected, I can see why many think that will lead to a second bounce. The best correction that non-entrepreneurs can actually accomplish would be to get the Democrats out of power, as their crazy job-killing legislation just makes all this worse.
The DEA still has 10,000 too many employees.
More public jobs certainly need to be trimmed, particularly at the bloated management level. To get down into the excess of jobs at the staff level, government processes need to be streamlined. I'm not confident about that happening, but at least the numbers are moving in the right direction.
But there's good news here, in that the numbers don't support the claims that we are on the brink of another recession.
Where do these claims emanate?
Do you think that it's a partisan strategy to convince the country that we need to change the political landscape and get rid of Obama and go Republican? I hear the recession comments coming mainly from that side of the aisle, and cynical me wonders whether the 'recession' dialogue is a strategic communications prelude to next year's elections.
Mark is at it again. He ignores the very troubling 16.5% U6 number and is excited about part time jobs created thanks to repairs that have to take place due to a tropical storm system that did a great deal of damage.
Yes, the decline in public employment is a good thing. But given the bloated payrolls it is not nearly enough. And as we argue about trivia the unfunded liabilities keep growing larger and larger.
What next? Will Mark look at the inevitable decline in the US dollar and argue how it will stimulate exports? Or cheer every broken window fallacy out there?
I agree with Jeff Immelt's recommendation that the best way to bring back private sector jobs is to cut the corporate tax rate to the same levels (20-25%) applicable in Europe and Japan and get rid of the loopholes so all the players have a level field. Further, a tax holiday should apply to bring back expatriated intellectual property.
Better yet, cut the coporate tax rate to 10%.
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