The graphics in last night's Chart Imitates Life segment drew a strong response from the folks I was watching with on Twitter, so I've brought the charts here, after the jump. If you're interested in exploring the statistics yourself and are frustrated by the labyrinthine Bureau of Labor Statistics site, the charts come from Table B-1, here. Scroll way down toward the bottom for the Government sector options. You're better off with the seasonally adjusted view because otherwise it's all zig-zaggy. Once you ask it to retrieve the data you'll be taken to a page that allows you to choose the date range with a check box option for showing a chart. So, for example, if you're curious what last night's charts look like all strung together (government employees since 1988)...
Just a reminder, this one is showing change in government employment during recession periods for these presidents.
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Statistics, charts, graphs, facts - these are not consistent with the GOTP message that "President Obama has grown the size of government". And it will be that way until the next GOTP'er becomes President, when by necessity the "government will grow" again.
I don't want to rain on everyone's parade, but if you go to the BLS page Will links to, you can request just Federal seasonally adjusted non Post office workers.
It's pretty flat for both Bush II and Obama.
So my guess is all the variation was due to state employment in response to the availability of state tax revenues. Some pretty devastating rocks can be thrown at the argument Maddow was making. I think the numbers will probably support the case it was not Obama's "financial prudence" or even that of the states. It was simply that they didn't have the cash to pay the bills and unlike the federal government did not have the option to deficit spend.
My view is that it is a disaster that government spending at the state level went down. Obama was trying to send money to the states, but many of the idiot governors simply kept slashing employment anyway- choosing to use the money towards an austerity rather than a Keynesian strategy.
It was a failure of management- not to place strings on how that stimulus money was to be spent. Obama believes in the governance theory of allowing states great latitude. His advisers had no clue that the right wing would seize on populist sentiments to drive programs of austerity. So that's what the states did.
Personally, I think that green descending line is nothing to be proud about. Letting that happen was a evidence of federal incapacity to sustain the stimulus. If you are a progressive- you don't act like a wall flower. You use your power to force morons to do the right thing.
That 500,000 worker drop is nearly all accounted for not at the state government level, but what the BLS calls Local Governement. On the BLS page Will linked to, go to the bottom and click local government and local government minus education. You will find most of the 500,000 drop there-
More than half of it is education employment.
Brilliant. Just when you have a lot of worker dislocation in need of retraining you cut education.
Brilliant. So I shift the criticism. Why were the Local Government authorities slashing jobs with abandon post 2010? Did the stimulus funds peter out? Or did it take this long for the localities to realize they were SOL as Michael Lewis chronicled in his recent book.
JohnM,
If the long-time frame curve (1988-present) is divided by US population, the curve is essentially flat except for the census spikes and a decline over the last few years.
(See #9 below.)
Yes, the decline is most likely due to layoffs of teachers, county health workers, librarians, police officers, and other local employees. But, getting into the weeds as to why they have been laid off should include a discussion of the high cost of public retirement systems (Such as the cost of allowing teachers to retire in their 50's). Paying for two teachers or police officers for every active employee is not viable over the long term.
@JohnMesserly -- it's true, a great many of the government workers lost have been teachers. This article from the Economic Policy Institute has some interesting stuff about the overall picture.
It wasn't Michael Lewis book, it was his Vanity fair piece I was thinking about. Skip ahead to Page 4 when he is describing the meltdown at the city level.
Regarding the EPI blurb Laura mentions above, Chris Hayes put a chart up a week ago sourced from Hamilton Project. I cite the report they got the data from, and the chart he displayed (here).
I also note there the reason that getting back to 2008's employment strength (as measured by the employment to population ratio) is not supported by Census and BLS projections. Arguably, measuring employment strength by the unemployment rate is bogus, since all it tells you is the number of people still looking for jobs.
The really really depressing thing is that not only is the number of jobs destined to gradually decrease, the distribution is not even. That is- the high paying jobs are loosing more jobs, while the lowest paying jobs are actually increasing. I modified David Autor's graph comparing this shift over time (here)
So if Autor is right, all Obama's program for more money to higher education will not mean more people in better paying jobs. That's a false hope. It just means better ability of people to have a shot at those declining number of high paying jobs. That is a meritocracy pitch that is a good one, promoting an egalitarian promise of a chance at becoming a privileged elite, but the overall movement towards greater separation between elites and the low skilled workers is decidedly hostile towards egalitarian ideals.
People may all get a "fair shot" as Obama is fond of using in speeches, but the overall dream is fading as those high paying jobs disappear forever.
The losers get to post their phd in physics certificate in their taxi.
BUILD:MAINTAIN:DEFEND.
Eventually, all building ends. the human brain has a difficult time with that - except the repuber brain - they simply want to destroy all to build again to steal again. simple minded neanderthal solution.
yes, we have an UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM. If you think about it, what are you building for? to keep building? at some point we all need to sit down and use what we build and share the resources we have in an equitable fashion.
but that plan is not in the constitution because back then, land was plenty.
What we MUST do is plan for unemployment. Unemployment will be a norm. but it is not for lack of employment, it is for "end of job" efforts. it is for "success" of having finished and now to enjoy and not labor.
Our state cut education. My parents are educators but managed to keep their jobs. My father is a school superintendant and had a very unique viewpoint on the cuts. "Here is less money, do the exact same work with the exact same result but use less money." His school actually had a surplus in funding by using intelligence in budgeting (my dad would have made a great CEO but he loves kids). The state raided the surplus (they capped surplus at 5% of budget and took the rest for the state general fund) and left the school to fend for itself. My dad convinced the teachers union to accept a 5% teacher pay REDUCTION to avoid layoffs, then did some accounting wizardry to make that 5% surplus actually encompass a 10% surplus and kept every teacher employed. Three years later, the state had increased schools budgets back to pre-cut levels. Then the uber-conservatives in the district stacked the BOE and fired my dad. No good deed...
Bob, its a raw deal and I wished it was not so common.
The Michael Lewis piece on on local government starting at page 4 leads in with Schwartzenegger talking about local government. It gets at why what happened to your father is happening everywhere.
The local school board gets packed because angry right wingers use their subculture's frustration to mobilize supporters. And the rest of us have many many other things to do other than watching paint dry in local government.
I don't know what the solution is, but it's probably outside people's comfort zone. Like down the street there is a registered sex offender who has a history of preying on children then skipping to another state or country (an ex japanese pop music star who has dough). So there is a neighborhood group and lots of the parents want to do something belligerent, and it is painful listening to all of them vent. I have 6 children 11YO and younger so I have a lot of skin in the game but I also believe in not engaging in gestapo or harassment tactics. Heated emotions, dealing with people you'd rather not, listening to people go on and on, using the meeting for some sort of psychological cathartic purpose and you are looking for the next button but you have 2 more hours of this ordeal to go and there is no escape but you must maintain appearances, and wait for the opportunity to make the move and get the group mobilized into a coordinated response they can all agree on.
Yuck. We really focus a lot of our young lives on self actualization- individualism and all, so this stuff just rubs against the grain. It reminds me of the hippie politics and communes and co-ops that I was oftentimes very relieved to have escaped from. I felt I was born for the World, and "wasn't into the small bore stuff."
But the way you wind up with good schools and responsive elected officials is to put energy into the World at the microcosm level. That's how the world gets changed- and the right wingers know it. It's a lesson the more individualistic progressives need to get into their DNA. We don't like herd behavior, and there is not too much glory in being just one of the foot soldiers fighting the good fight in anonymous battles occurring in countless neighborhood meetings across the globe.
no wonder we have high unemplyment
Facts keep getting in the way of GOTP Truth.
Does anyone know if these numbers include those enlisted in the military? If so, I'd actually be curious to see what the Bush era would look like without the military increases during Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also, do these numbers include private military contractors who have taken over many of the jobs military personnel used to do?
yeah, actually, that's a pretty good question. figuring this out would get messy pretty fast, because the private contractors in Iraq alone would be thousands (if not tens of thousands).
US employment figures (BLS) have included those in the military since the 1980's, so they are probably included here.
4.3 How are private contractors paid by the government but not directly employed by the government dealt with by the BLS?
All these pretty charts are pretty misleading unless these "off the books" workers are taken into account.
I would think they would be counted as well, but then I would think that capital gains and inheritance would be taxed at the same or a higher rate than earned income. (Because we should encourage work over idleness, not punish work.)
Silly me.
So I do not know that one.
Great question, @KookieMonster. From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Hmmm, so soldiers and spooks are counted as private sector employees?
Only in America...
(What else to call them? Non-governmental public employees just sounds silly.)
No, signed xgov personnel spec.
I assume the spike in the Obama chart is due to the census. Can you or anyone confirm this.
All the spikes in the three graphs with year 0s are census spikes (HW Bush and Clinton also have the same spike)
Yes, Rachel mentioned that on the air last night. If you look at the long-range chart you can see census spikes at 10-year intervals.
Cutting government employees and turning over their work to private companies has been part of the repub mantra for years. Unfortunately, in almost every case where that has been done, from the federal level on down, this has usually resulted in higher costs and poorer service. How can anyone forget the stellar work done by Halliburton in Iraq, where they took over a lot of the logistics operations from the military, resulting in construction so slipshod that soldiers were electrocuted in the showers that Halliburton slapped together? Or the water and fuel that was hauled from Kuwait to Iraq at prices that would shame a loan shark? And of course, there were the Blackwater mercenaries who did the same jobs as the military had done protecting diplomats in Afghanistan, but were paid 2-3 times more than the soldiers who had previously done exactly the same job? Or the private prisons, which actually have provided judges with financial incentives, (aka, bribes), to send kids to jail that would otherwise never have ended up incarcerated? The new robber barons turn everything they touch into a slimy morass that steals from the taxpayer to fill their pockets. Just as communism fell because it failed to address the central issue of human greed, capitalism is rushing toward the same crisis. Greed is strangling us in the guise of corporatism.
that process is a process of ownership which is the objective of controlfreaks which use methods of conquering to own lands, peoples, lives, futures, pretty much everything. it is a manifestation of unchecked tribalistic narcism. and it si a acancer upon an evolved and enlightened and good society.
Excellent points. Having played on both sides of the military equation I find that almost in every case service quality decreases when things are turned over to contractors and always at a higher cost. It is not that the contractor down on the ground doing the work doesn't care about doing a good job, it is that the higher echelons within the company only care about fulfilling the scope of contract, and nothing more. They also need to show they are providing scope of contract so the contractor on the ground has to spend large portions of their time filling out reports as to how they are meeting requirements. Also the contractor on the ground isn't always the high paid person people think they are. Much of the cost goes to the company and those at the higher echelons within the company. I always thought that contractors would do a better job, but as life has gone on I find it is quite possibly the most ignorant way of running a military organization.
I remember a conversation I had with a friend of mine back at the beginning of the Iraq war. Bush had just called up a huge number of reserve and guard units and I said watch what happens to the unemployment numbers in about a month...sure enough unemployment went down by almost exactly the same number of people who had been deployed...they had to leave jobs at home and those jobs had to be done so temps were hired...
Not that I am advocating war as a solution to unemployment but I think it illustrates the point under discussion.
young? the world has been thru this bull@!$%# scenario for.... centuries. discussion? i would prefer to see people who discuss also propose solutions. because if you do not, then discussion simply mutates into entertainment.... and that is pathos.
Question: Are these JUST federal government employees, or do they include state & local? The impact on the economy is greater if you're including state & local, but the presidential administration has far less effect on those personnel decisions.
total federal employees for 2011 was 4.4 million.
So, the graph must include state and local government employees as well.
I wondered the same thing last night when I watched Rachel's piece.
@JayinAz -- Those charts show total government employment, federal, state and local combined. If you want, you can use the Bureau of Labor Statistics search tool to separate them out more.
Select the data you want to see, and as Will says, make sure you're selecting from the "seasonally adjusted" column.
Note: If the curve above is divided by the US population, the result is essentially a flat line with decrease over the last few years.
US population in July 1988: 245 million
US population in July 2012: 315 million
Ratio 2012/1988: 1.286
Graph figure for 1988: about 17,400,000
(17,400,000)(1.286)=22,400,000, which is roughly the high point on the graph.
So, as the population grows we hire more public employees to provide the same level of service to more people.
@John_seeking_enlightenment, In general terms, I see this the same way, and I love that you did the math. The change, obviously, is that the U.S. population has continued to grow, but during the last few years, the number of government workers has fallen.
Yep, due to laying off local public employees such as teachers and police officers.
However, with many public employment systems permitting retirement well before the Social Security age, as the baby boom retires the cost of these systems will soak up every available dime of public money even without a financial crisis. The financial crisis probably just brought it to a head a bit faster.
BTW, Rachel's case associated with the graph would be more readily visible if the graph presented during the show was normalized for population.
And it is not real unless one does the math. (dammit!)
9.1 It would appear from these charts that the number of workers employed by the government has fallen.
If the government were to pay a private contractor, say KBR or Halliburton (likely at costs plus), to employ a million people (for example) would that be reflected in these statistics?
UNDERSTAND THIS.... for a socity to work properly, nicely, comfortably and goodly, there is a RATIO OF BUILD::MAINTAIN::DEFEND that works. this ratio will change slightly depending on the state of growth and comfort. But in the end - aka now - when everything is already built - the society needs the MAINTENANCE PROGRAM going strong - aka infrastructure.
the pimped out repubes prefer to amp up the defense % to start a war to destroy most everything so they can build again without having to maintain. why? psychologically - repuber brains cannot handle maintaining which requires sharing, responsibility and co-operation. socially - repubes are pmped out sellers of selves who seek the power and control of OWNERSHIP. After a war, repubes money mongers can buy land cheap and own it then hire near slave labor.
We have reached a point where even those who call civil service a scam and claim they would never take a government job are realizing just what the sequester will cost them as those government jobs get cut even further.
The sequester could awaken a lot of people.
Are those spikes in 1990, 2000, and 2010 from census hiring? I'm sure the 2010 spike is.
I know that the perception is changing, but I think the old perception of a "government worker" is a bureaucrat. Maybe a postal worker or an IRS agent, but not someone really HELPFUL--like teachers, firefighters, and police.
That is why the GOP likes to talk about "government spending" as if it had nothing to do with jobs or public safety or education. And the president makes his speeches in front of a wall of firefighters who are about to be laid off.
The sequester will impact the poor the most. Domestic contractors-- like non-profit, humanitarian or social service programs who depend on government grants to run programs for children, refugees, preschoolers and the elderly will be cut--meaning unemployment of those already living on low wages helping the poor -- entire safety nets are about to be slashed. yay us. bring on the jobs wealthy people!!!
in an environment of NO real GROWTH - which is where we are at today - RECIRCULATION IS PARAMOUNT to sustain life support. Thus, when corps are not hiring and new business startups lag, the GOVT must be the employer of last resort. Otherwise the society will suffocate. Wallstreet likes the suffocation thing after everything is built. People are expensive so wallstreet - seeking more and more and more profits all the time - pays the pimped out repubes to BRAND MANY AS EXPENDABLE in the hopes they will kill themselves off.
13.0
Hmm, this has me wondering.
Who decides where the cuts are actually implemented? Couldn't some of these more fragile programs be saved? Who decides?
If forced to cut $500 billion from the defense budget, couldn't the Executive start closing military bases in Texas or some such?
It seems to me the Administration has a pretty big cudgel to wield if Congress wants to continue playing these games.
That's what makes it a sequester, I think. It's automatic, indiscriminate(mostly, NORAD will stay open), and across the board.
Is it the Defense Dept. budget is cut by $40 Billion (for example) or is it every department under the Dept. of Defense is cut by x amount adding up to $40 Billion?
I don't know how a statutory across the board cut would work unless the Congress has enshrined into law the specific number every single government department must be allocated. And even then, for how long? Could they not be re-allocated the next day?
Are these the kind of statutory budget caps of which Ryan was so proud?
We hear alot about this looming crisis in big picture terms, but the devil, as they say, is in the details.
I admit I don't know how this stuff works, which is why I ask.
My understanding is that a department such as Department of Defense will cut all programs at a rate that equals the required amount to be cut, with few exceptions. I guess this would maybe look like if 40 billion is equal to 10% of the DoD budget then everything gets slashed 10%. the numbers are just for example making and are not anywhere close to what the actual DoD budget is.
When you cut government spending, you eliminate programs, which in turn eliminates government employee's jobs. So if you're an out-of-work public employee, what are you gonna do? Look for another job would be my first choice. But remember, we're in a recession and private businesses are holding back on new hires.
The next choice is to go on welfare, unemployment or food stamps--even if only temporarily while you look for a job. Where does the money come from to pay such benefits? The government of course!
So we've lost workers and of course eliminated services to the taxpayers. The end result is that we saved money by kicking these folks out but offset that by paying for unemployment, food stamps etc. So, we the taxpayers are paying these employees either way. The only difference is that we are getting NO services for it.
Too bad we don't teach simple arithmetic in schools these days.
isnt that absolutely amazing! we were talking about this the other day and amused that pimped out repubers would instead of having people be paid for performance, they would kick them off work and have to pay them for not working.
John Boehner fired the math teacher. She was stocking shelves over Christmas and now she's hoping her friend can get her that interview with his company....
If you want a system that works - for physical life support - and progress to reasonable comfort - you MUST get away from PERPETUAL GROWTH. Growth is a wallstreet scam/sham. Wallstreet is all about RESOURCE FRAUD.
If you want a system that works - you must separate that which works for business and that which works for people and ONLY DEAL WITH THE 2 NET DIFFERENCES! Strictly speaking...
Capitalism is a system that attracts eagerness and rewards competitive effort thru a system of HORDING of resources. Socialism is a system that guarantees life supports and rewards co-operative effort thru a system of RECIRCULATION of resources.
If you do not operate in this fashion, you are guaranteed to fail or live in hell.
If you guys could only see how much you have in common with the gold-buggers, well, you'd faint.
Gee. I guess we can understand why that VA backlog is such an intractable problem. Perhaps a "hiring initiative" is what is called for.
Does the chart take into consideration of the increase of population?
But OPM data does not reflect anything of the sort.....
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/executive-branch-civilian-employment-since-1940/
and as noted above that confirms that the loss in employment is at the state level and is now being argued both ways in that many economists acknowledge that the loss of statement employment reflected could ill be afforded and further hurt the economy, but now Rachel is arguing it has a silver lining because it shows the administration is being prudent, lol.
If I re-post this, my critics will say "yeah, but look at the source.".
Yeah, they do not care that the real source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they care that the source that mentioned the source is Rachel Maddow. You see, a good solid Republican source would never mention a source that does not agree with their "untruths".