How much of that 8% unemployment figure Romney is using is due to public employee job loss from

[Skidmore]

budget cuts? Somehow this needs to get injected into the discourse. Republicans getting what they wish for in terms of government cuts apparently still doesn't eliminate their need to whine.

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/08/480438/unemployment-without-government-cuts/

The Unemployment Rate Would Be A Full Point Lower Without Public Sector Job Losses
By Pat Garofalo on May 8, 2012 at 6:55 pm

2011 was a bad year for public sector employees, with an average of 22,000 public sector jobs disappearing every month. And the two years before it weren’t much better. In fact, “the last three years of job losses at the state and local government level has been the most dramatic since Labor Department records began in 1955.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, the unemployment rate would be a full point lower — at 7.1 percent — if these job losses hadn’t happened:

The Labor Department’s establishment survey of employers — the jobs count that it bases its payroll figures on — shows that the government has been steadily shedding workers since the crisis struck, with 586,000 fewer jobs than in December 2008. Friday’s employment report showed the cuts continued in April, with 15,000 government jobs lost. [...]

I found this 2011 article:

http://www.examiner.com/article/jobs-report-proves-budget-cuts-increase-unemployment

Jobs report proves budget cuts increase unemployment

JOBS REPORTJULY 8, 2011BY: ROBERT BOWENSubscribe

President Obama speaking about jobs report. Budget cuts kill jobs.

The latest jobs report released today proves that budget cutting is not a job creator, it is a job destroyer. The report shows that the private sector added 57,000 new jobs last month, the 15th straight month of private sector job growth. Despite that, the unemployment rate rose. The reason is that layoffs in the public sector due to budget cuts offset the private sector gains resulting in a net of only 18,000 new jobs. This is far less than expected, and not enough to keep a recovery going.

This was an early Christmas present to Republican Presidential candidates who jumped all over this bad news with glee. They were saying "this proves Obama's policies are a failure. However, the failure in this report is really the budget cuts and Congress and Republican Governors are largely to blame.

Report debunks the GOP mantra: spending cuts and tax cuts create jobs

The Republican talking point is the same: “Cut spending .and cut taxes on the wealthy and it will create jobs.” They call simulative jobs bills “job killers”. They say this despite the fact there is no historical data to support that position. In fact, the data shows just the opposite. Government spending leads to higher employment and tax cuts have had, and continue to have, a negative affect on employment...

[rfranklin]

1. The Republicans count on people being too lazy or too busy to investigate...

and believe the narrative that the Republicans sell them. Just think about how many sound bites you've heard from them on "job creators" and "job killing bills." Et cetera. That is the deepest most Americans go when it comes to such ideas.

[Cosmocat]

2. 14,000 public school jobs lost in Pa last year

because of budgetary cuts forced by taxation indexing at the school district level.

I make this point repeatedly and it is like a tree falling in a forest.

Rs made a VERY concerted effort over the last four years to cut public sector jobs at the state level where they had control, and also at the federal level. Reasonable estimates have it being about a pecentage point in the overall unemployment numbers.

They do what the do, and the "liberal media" carries water for it - they get to scream about the need to balance the budget on the backs of cutting public sector employees while at the same time screaming about unemployment numbers.