Notes On Government Employment

Paul Krugman


I see that my various posts on government employment have brought out a variety of complaints — OK, there was a temporary spike from the Census that’s being misused, but isn’t there an upward trend, isn’t that a bad thing, etc..

So, a few points.

First, what we’ve seen under Obama is a small rise in federal employment, swamped by a larger fall in state and local employment — reflecting the budget woes of the states, and the inadequacy of federal aid in the slump. So you see a small rise if you look only at the feds, but a decline if you look at the overall picture.

Second, most government workers are at the local level, and most of the rest are state workers; the federal government is a small piece of the total. And if you look at what they do, a lot of them are teachers; many of the rest are firefighters, police, and other occupations we sort of like.

(Original here.)