Government jobs have long been a stable and secure career for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers.<\/p>\n
But between December 2009 and December 2010, the federal, state and local governments shed 34,700 jobs — more than any other sector in New York.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That’s in one year.\u00a0 And my guess is that we’re just warming up, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatening as many as 10,000 state-level lay-offs next year.<\/p>\n
Combine that with the teacher and local government lay-offs that will be triggered by his austerity budget — which cuts pass-through grants sharply — we could easily see another 30,000-40,000 public sector workers go.<\/p>\n
If Albany approves a property tax cap, that will curtail funding for schools and local governments even further, almost certainly triggering even deeper reductions.<\/p>\n
A generation ago, the impact of this transformation wouldn’t have been so profound.\u00a0 We had a broad-based middle class in America, with relatively small gaps between the haves and have-nots.<\/p>\n
But these days, public-sector jobs are one of the last bastions of economic security, especially for minorities, for people in rural areas like the North Country, and people with lower levels of education.<\/p>\n
When you factor in the economic vitality sparked by those jobs, the impact is profound.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the best case scenario is that we transition in an orderly way from taxpayer-dependent jobs in the public sector to tax-revenue generating jobs in the private sector.<\/p>\n
But the reality of America’s modern economy is that many of these government workers will be entering a brutal job market.<\/p>\n
Even if they find work, the jobs are likely to be more demanding, with longer hours, lower pay, and fewer benefits, than the world they left behind.<\/p>\n
I’m also guessing that we’ve seen the end of the era when government jobs are compensated so generously.\u00a0 State workers in the North Country earn, on average, $20,000 a year more than workers in the private sector.<\/p>\n
I don’t know anyone who thinks that is fair, or sustainable.<\/p>\n
But in many ways, this change in New York’s economy is every bit as challenging as the collapse of Michigan’s automobile industry, or the decline of manufacturing in Ohio.<\/p>\n
All those government jobs created the illusion of solid, stable prosperity.\u00a0 Now, somehow, we have to struggle toward the real thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month, governments across the US shed another 14,000 jobs.\u00a0 That continues a downsizing trend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,4862,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3711,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3710\/revisions\/3711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}