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Monday, June 7, 2010

Selective Data on Government Employment

Matt Yglesias offers this graph of shrinking state and local government payrolls.

In the same post, he notes that if you look at combined federal, state, and local expenditures there hasn't been a net fiscal stimulus in response to the economic crisis.

So for determining the net fiscal effects he combines federal, state, and local spending, but in providing a graph on the employment decline, federal hiring is not included.

The quickest data I could find indicated an increase in Federal civilian employment of over 60,000 between 9/2008 & 3/2009 (the latests data on the Office of Personnel Management website).

I would be surprised if to find that federal payrolls have actually shed jobs since March of 2009.

Posted via web from rhymeswithclown's posterous

3 comments:

D said...

Add the 411,000 census 'workers' added to the federal payrolls. The ones the Democrats and other Keynesians praise.
It's productive, you see, because every taxpayer must now lose out to cover the costs.
Again, the Unseen.

J. Strupp said...

Everyone is well aware of census vs. private sector hiring in the monthly labor statistics. Democrats and Keynesians included. Even the President highlighted the temporary nature of census hiring last week (when NFP numbers were announced). Look it up.


Census hiring is productive because, well, we have to take the census every once in awhile. Taxpayers lose out because, well, we have to pay to take the census every once in awhile.

Not everything is a vast Keynesian conspiracy.

D said...

J,
The President is a consummate politician. Those who actually believe what he says are not as eloquent as the Trickster in Chief.
The Dems of WI praised the hiring of 400,000 unproductive workers as proof that the economy is headed in the right direction. (So apparently not everyone is aware of the temporary and unproductive nature of this hiring.)

Census hiring is unproductive because a) nothing is produced and b) because the 'product' is neither demanded nor purchased willingly by anyone and c) because the hapless taxpayer must pay for the whole scheme, ensuring a pure loss on the part of productive society d) because the census has transformed from a mere headcount to a vast scheme of wealth redistribution.

Census 'workers' openly tout the fact that we need to respond, 'so we get our federal money!'

There is no 'our' federal money. They only money the federal government has is what it takes from producers by force and what it prints out of thin air.