‘It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine; it’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about,” Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid claimed last week. Senator Reid is simply wrong: The private sector has suffered from much deeper job cuts than public-sector workers have faced.
Obviously, Americans are hurting, with some 7 million losing their jobs since the start of the recession. And that doesn’t include the 7.2 million people who should have entered the work force over the same time period. But the pain hasn’t been in the public sector.
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The only group of workers who are “doing just fine” are those working for the federal government, where employment has increased by 11 percent since the start of the recession. Both private-sector and state- and local-government employment have fallen. While private-sector employment has recovered slightly from 7.5 percent drop it originally suffered, it is still down 5.4 percent.
The drop in state- and local-government workers may be what concerns Senator Reid, but in percentage terms, it is only about a third the size of the drop in private-sector employment over the same time (5.4 versus 1.8 percent). Adding together all levels of government, employment has fallen by just over 1 percent. Governments, which have piled up huge debts, have also avoided the sharp swings in employment faced in the private sector.
Reid wants to have a giant $450 billion tax increase over the next ten years to pay for his “stimulus” for public-sector workers, but it is the private sector, which is hurting the most by far, that is going to pay for his additional grant to public-sector workers. Massive subsidies have already been directed to public-sector union workers in the five previous “stimulus” programs passed during Obama’s first two years in office. Those transfers have protected public-sector workers from the cuts that private-sector workers have had to bear, and the money also guaranteed pay increases for teachers’ unions that private-sector workers surely haven’t seen.
The Obama administration no longer even uses the discredited term “jobs saved or created” to describe the help that they are giving. Now they are using only the very vague term “jobs supported.” Is it worth private-sector workers’ paying $87,500 per government worker to temporarily “support” the latter’s jobs? Just this week, Americans learned that D.C. is now the richest metro area in the country; federal-employee compensation averages more than $126,000.
With U.S. income falling almost 7 percent since the recession “officially” ended in June 2009, Sen. Harry Reid and other Democrats would do well to realize that a sixth stimulus and their solution of always giving more money to public-sector unions or other targeted special interests isn’t working.
I love how the $450 billion tax increase is to "pay for" the stimulus. I guess the $1.5 trillion deficit doesn't need to be paid for. It's like a family that earns $60,000 but spends $100,000. Then they take a luxury vacation but it's ok because they worked some overtime to pay for the vacation.
You make a few valid points, but COME ON. You ignore the most obvious rebuttal and the current trends Reid was referencing. The fact that over the last few months, the private sector is consistently adding jobs while the public sector is consistently shedding thereby depressing the aggregate number considerably. How are you going to purport to refute Reid's assertion and ignore the data he was actually addressing. National Review is supposed to be the bastion conservative intellectual though yet it is overflowing with garbage like this. Dissapointing
It seems that Lott is not falling for Reid's fallacy by way of picking a convenient time frame that supports Reid's position. This is a common fallacy where to prove an increase one just picks a low point in the data and compares it to a high point in the data. One reverses the process to prove a decrease. It's a form of cherry-picking data.
Lott is using a longer time frame--the start of the recession--because that's more relevant.
From the "The Hill" article linked in Lott's article:
"Private-sector jobs have increased over the last 19 months, while government jobs have lagged. They've also seen cuts in several states that are struggling to balanced their books."
Notice two things in that quote: 1. It's only talking about job increases and 2. That a lot of private sector jobs were cut more than 19 months ago, It's not unexpected that the private sector would be adding more jobs than the public sector because the private sector had previously cut so heavily. The public sector hadn't made any significant cuts at the beginning of the recession so they wouldn't have so many "vacancies" to fill. (We also don't know from that quote how many job cuts were made by each sector during the same time-frame.)
That quote also references that many states are struggling to balance their books. I'm wondering if state and local governments are not adding to their work force--and even cutting their work force in some cases--because they have to pay out so much money to retirees. The pension debacle is a separate issue, but it is related.
Mikeal,
Public employees do vote on issues other than employment issues... and most totally ignore their unions unless they happen to agree anyway. Personally, I vote on whether or not a local guy seems to have common sense. I look at crime. I look at how they mean to bring business into town. I can assure you, when it comes to contract negotiations in my profession (librarian), every time, they rejoice if they manage to avoid a pay cut and/or unpaid furloughs (they don't always). Asking for raises is considered way out of the question. Which may be perfectly fair in the economy, but doesn't exactly make it sympathetic when people complain about what a powerful sector we supposedly are.
I think one reason public service workers tend to feel put upon here is that, municipally speaking, they are getting pruned, just as the workload goes up with assisting everyone who's out of work... and then they get harangued for the temerity of... what, exactly? *Having* a job that they do every day?
The point that the Democrats don't seem to understand. Private Sector jobs MAKE money, Public Sector jobs COST money.
Another way to look at it, Private Sector jobs are the hosts, Public Sector jobs are the parasites. A body can live with a certain amount of parasites and be fine. We are now experiencing an infestation and the body is ill.
