The dirty secret of the 2010 election
Today’s job numbers are getting batted around in the usual pundit-and-spin cycle. But beneath the headline — the loss of 90,000 jobs in the overall employment market — is a hidden fact.
Over the last year, private sector jobs have been growing, slowly but steadily. It’s the government — Federal, state and local — that has been shrinking.
In this latest employment survey, the private sector actually hired more than 60,000 workers. That’s still an anemic recovery.
But the real pain right now comes in the public sector, where agencies at all levels have been shedding tens of thousands of employees over the last year.
Governor David Paterson is proposing to cut thousands more jobs here in New York state before Christmas.
This reality, of course, is 180 degrees the opposite of the misconception that most Americans hold.
So let me say it again: Big government has been shrinking steadily over the last two years.
A lot of economists think this trend — cutting public-sector jobs in the midst of a deep recession — is incredibly dangerous.
Obviously, job cuts are needed over time to bring budgets into balance.
But by laying off so many workers now, when the private sector is still struggling and incapable of offering alternative jobs, we could tip the entire economy back into the red.
What do you think? Is this the time to slash government jobs or are we risking a double-dip recession?
Tags: election10
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1) U6 Unemployment at 17.1%. The highest since Oct. 2009.
That is the total number of unemployed, including those who are no longer reporting their unemployment (gave up, mostly).
Being a reporter, I thought you would want full disclosure.
2) “A lot of economists think this trend — cutting public-sector jobs in the midst of a deep recession — is incredibly dangerous. ”
The recession ended June 2009. This is Obama’s mess.
3) “Local governments cut 76,000 jobs last month, most of them teachers.”
August 10, 2010 – President Obama signed a bill ($26 billion) that he says will save hundreds of thousands of teacher and other public workers from unemployment.
Apparently Obama’s $26 bill didn’t do the trick. He truly is incompetent. He doesn’t have a clue how to fix the unemployment situation.
Everyone is too impatient. Pres. Obama cannot magically fix the problems of the previous two adminstrations over night. This is going to take more time and more money. There needs to be a stimulus package, but those in Congress are too timid to tackle anything controversial this close to an election.
Pres. Obama needs to be given more time to right the ship. It may very well be into his second term before we start seeing significant changes.
It is unfortunate that there have been lay-offs in the gov’t/schools, but some of these could have been avoided. Perhaps concessions by the unions may have held off some of these lay-offs. If the workforce can be kept intact, the revenue stream for the unions will hold steady. Fewer workers means lower revenues from dues and that’s not good for the business model.
There are three issues.
1) Government funds used to directly create a job or directly hire people for employment or directly maintain a current position.
2) Government money spent on millions of other things having nothing to do with new employment.
3) The actual total amount of government money being spent.
Number 1 is going down, number 2 and 3 are going up.
Government is not shrinking it is growing, it is not creating jobs.
The budgets at the state level are not shrinking they are growing, but just because the actual budget is growing does not mean we are hiring people in the public sector. The same goes for the Federal budget. We must then ask where did all of the money go, where is all of the money going? Its not going to create jobs.
JDM has a good point, where did the 26 billion go that was supposed to save all of these teaching jobs?
The problem with this administration is that most of us feel that we are continually being sold, it seems like a giant con game with no accountability.
The money should have been restricted for classroom teachers salaries, but no it was another give away who knows where it exactly went?
It’s All Bush’s Fault – It’s cute you’re still clinging onto the whole hope and change message.
Part of the problem with the 26 billion was the dithering and obstructionism, particularly in the Senate. Schools had to have spending plans in place by mid April to be approved of disapproved by mid-May.The 26 billion finally came in August, but the staffing cuts had been made and it is very difficult for school districts, at least in New York State to rescind their approved budget. Many district here in the North COuntry opted to not restore and rehire except in very limited ways. They have until next year to use the money and they may very well do that by this time next year. It’s just not correct to say that the program was a failure of strategy. It was a “failure” because of it’s timing and may end up being a huge silver lining to the continuing dark cloud in the coming months.
By the way … Does anyone remember in ’08 and 09 that many economists feared a long slow recovery to this recession? There was the possible ‘L’ shape, The ‘U’ Shape, the Double U shape recovery. One thing most pundits agreed on was that the toughest part was going to be employment recovery. We have had 30 years of very bad fiscal policies, driven by ideological clap-trap and nobody is going to fix that damage in 20 months.
I don’t like the idea of layoffs, but state, local, and school employees need to make compensation and benefits concessions. The days of pay going up several times the rate of inflation, unfirable workers, and platinum plated pension and health care benefits must end.
john:
“We have had 30 years of very bad fiscal policies”
Quite a myth.
By what measures do you make this statement?
Since 1990, the highest unemployment was in 1992 at 8.5%. Under Bush, the unemployment reached a high of 6.5% in 2004ish and dropped to 4.5% AFTER that.
Between the 30 year myth, and what “It’s all B’s F” says, you guys seem to want to conjole this president’s ineptness.
http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=usunemployment&met=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment+statistics
First off, anyone who actually believes the recession ended in 2009 is dreaming, just like the lie that UE is at less than 10%.
Second, Obama cannot “fix” the economy. The economy will only recover when private enterprise recovers and that’s not happening anytime soon. Let Obama and the Republicrats keep promising and spending and borrowing and taxing and regulating and there will never be a recovery.
This administration and congress are faced with a hundred holes to fill. They have been given enough dirt to fill fifty holes. The public believes there are three hundred holes. Nobody agrees on how the holes should be filled, who should fill them, or even IF they should be filled. But a significant portion of the population (and some prolific contributors to this blog) seems very comfortable call this president incompetent for not singlehandedly filling all of them to the satisfaction of everyone. Instead of giving credit to the president and – I’ll go ahead and say it – congress for filling fifty holes, or filling 100 of them halfway, they blame the current administration for digging the holes, or for digging up the dirt they used for fill. They say, in essence (as in the comments about the $26 billion teacher bill that did not save enough government jobs), “we used wayyyyy too much dirt because the holes aren’t full.”
I’m not a real fan of government for it’s own sake, and certainly not of taxes, but I think the current tone of the the debate is childish and simplistic. The “everything they do is wrong” argument (or right, for that matter) is a handy one, fitting nicely into soundbite sized bits and absolving its proponents from the responsibility of thought. To say “this is Obama’s mess” is ridiculous on the face of it. Especially since the only alternative offered with any consistency is the idea that he should have done nothing at all.
One thing never talked about (at least I haven’t heard it discussed) is how a portion (maybe a large portion) of the unemployment problem is due to many jobs simply no longer being needed.
While the population of the world continues to grow and while automation continues to eliminate jobs, many people find themselves simply not needed to keep commerce rolling. If they are needed, they are need only as consumers of the products (goods and services) being produced with fewer and fewer people.
I think the chickens born since the start of the industrial revolution are now coming home to roost.
Mervel said: “JDM has a good point, where did the 26 billion go that was supposed to save all of these teaching jobs?
The problem with this administration is that most of us feel that we are continually being sold, it seems like a giant con game with no accountability.”
With all due respect, Mervel, this feeling you have isn’t based on fact. It took me about 4.6 seconds to find this story about $1.3 billion going to save 9,000 teaching jobs in Florida: http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/100466564.html
I’m sure a little more research can find similar stories across the country.
Obama has been a disappointment in many ways IMO, but transparency isn’t one of them. You can track pretty much every dollar of stimulus spending, for example, on this government web site.
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
If that SEEMS like no accountability, then it seems you may be watching too much Fox News and listening to too much Glenn Beck.
True Pete. The days where a man could support his family tailing lumber at a mill or washing dishes is long gone. Same for the days of sending your kids to college by milking 20 cows and selling a few dozen eggs a week. So where have we gone? Today everybody has a college degree and they can’t find jobs. Meanwhile we have to import machinists and finish carpenters from Europe. Maybe we bought into the “college is the answer, you shouldn’t have to work with your hands” line too much.
Ah, yes, college. While I’m a firm believer in getting an education, including the old fashion way of home study as did many of our Founding Fathers, it is now beginning to look as though the push for a college education has two purposes that have nothing to do with getting an education.
One – keep the young from entering the job market for as long as possible.
Two – provide a steady source of income for colleges and professors.
And let me add a third – make it easy to refuse to hire someone to do a job they could learn on the job in a couple of months.
One thing I did learn and appreciate when in the Navy was how quickly they could train anyone to do just about any job within a few months – so long as they could read and write, and had some motivation.
I might add here. Eisenhower warned about the military/industrial complex. Maybe it’s time to warn about the industrial/education complex.
I think people are for government spending when they can really see what it has done in the area of jobs and accomplishments. If you have thousands of people out there building a Seaway across the North Country people can see it they know the benefits they are proud. If you have thousands of people building a space program to the moon, people can see it they see the jobs they see the accomplishments, if you have millions of people building an interstate highway system yes we can all see that and how great it was.
The problem Obama has is where did his trillion go? It does not seem to have done anything directly for employment or infrastructure? What great American project did Obama start with this massive spending? I expected to see new airports, new highways, new rails at least started. It seems like what we ended up with was making sure that current government employees got paid, that may have been necessary but it is not a winner politically and frankly is not what this country needed.