Cutbacks at State and Local governments have cost us 1 million jobs

[n2doc]

The Cost of Austerity
By DAVID LEONHARDT

In all kinds of ways — consumer demand, the federal deficit, even the weather — the medium-term future is highly uncertain. But this uncertainty, while the main problem, is not the only problem. We are also committing an unforced economic error. We’re cutting government at the same time that the private sector is cutting.

It is the classic mistake to make after a financial crisis. Hoover and even Roosevelt made a version of it in the 1930s. The Japanese made a version of it in the 1990s. Now we are making it.

Federal payrolls have been roughly flat for years (even as the population has been growing). But state and local payrolls grew over the last decade, by almost 20,000 jobs a month on average.

Since the crisis began and state and local taxes began plummeting, though, governments began to cut back. At first, the federal government stepped in, with the 2009 stimulus bill, and sent fiscal aid to states. Then the aid stopped.

In round numbers, state and local governments have cut about a half million jobs over the last two years. If they had continued to hire at their previous pace — expanding as the population expanded — they would have added about a half million jobs.


Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, via Haver Analytics
In other words, the state and local austerity of the last two years has cost the economy about one million jobs.

more

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/08/the-cost-of-austerity/

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

1. KICKED AND RECOMMENDED!!! Thank you!!! n/t

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[freshwest]

3. Ah, but our teapartiers are cheering. All government must be replaced by corporations.

The outlay of tax dollars won't go down, but it'll all be in private hands so that makes it all okay. No oversight either, what a great boondoggle. No investment in infrastructure, or anything for everybody, because that's socialism!

[Bluerthanblue]

4. it has here in NH and is a direct result of the mid-term

massacre.

:(

[HughBeaumont]

5. CNBC, of all places . . .

. . . they just had a graphic of a key piece of the crapola job numbers this year - 11 straight months of government job losses.

This is interesting because, as we all know, the Norquistites in the Repub party want to get government small enough to drown it in a bathtub, right?

321 thousand government jobs have been lost in 11 months. Stay with me now . . .

Of those 321, 306k are STATE AND LOCAL jobs.

What happened in November?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Uh, yeah, the WAVE OF FASCIST JOB-CUTTIN', DEPARTMENT-SLASHIN' REPUBLIGOVS, THAT'S WHAT!!!

So shouldn't the Repigs be PRAISING these job numbers, since one of their goals has been achieved?

And shouldn't the Repigs heads be exploding, since this represents a shrinking of "gub-mint" . . . under a Democratic President?????

[Dawson Leery]

6. And the Democratic base should not have taken their anger at Obama

out on people such as Russ Feingold.

[freshwest]

7. Too bad the teaparty media brainwashed many Democrats into staying home.

And they still don't know who's paying them to think that way.

[n2doc]

8. This is a lie.

The moderates are the ones who stayed home last election. Not the liberals.

Whereas in 2008, conservatives made up 34 percent of those who cast ballots, that number shot up to 42 percent last year. Moderates, on the other hand, made up just 38 percent of those who voted in 2010, down from 44 percent in 2008 (the percentage of liberals was barely changed). The 2010 election was the first since exit polls began in 1976 in which a plurality of the voters said they were conservatives rather than moderates.

This was fortunate for Republicans, because they lost moderate voters to Democrats by 13 percentage points (and liberals by 82 percentage points). Had the ideological composition of the electorate been the same in 2010 as in 2008 or 2006, the Republicans and Democrats would have split the popular vote for the House about evenly

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/why-the-g-o-p-cannot-compromise/

[freshwest]

9. They are celebrating, that and abortion restrictions, cutting Medicaid and making charter schools.