The Incredible Shrinking Government
Sunday, July 10, 2011

Republican anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist famously once said he wanted to reduce government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” He made some headway in June.

 

While the private sector added a disappointing 57,000 new jobs last month, all levels of government lost jobs. The result was a small uptick in the unemployment rate to 9.2%.

 

About 39,000 positions were shed by the public sector in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of this total 14,000 jobs were axed by federal agencies and 25,000 by state and local governments. It is the eighth monthly drop in a row.

 

The New York Times reported that nearly three-quarters of the job losses at the local level came in education.

 

Although the country’s population continues to grow, federal payrolls have been flat for years. But state and local payrolls grew by almost 20,000 jobs a month over the last decade. However, in the two years since the economy tanked, state and local governments have shed about half a million jobs. The debate over whether to stimulate the economy by spending government dollars to put people to work or attacking budget deficits by spending less has largely been won by the deficit hawks.

 

Everyone is hopeful that the policy of austerity and belt-tightening is more successful than it was for Herbert Hoover in the early 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt briefly in the late 1930s and Japan during the past 20 years. 

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Ken Broder

 

Federal, State Government Employment Drops (by Joe Davidson, Washington Post)

Employment Situation Summary (Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Job Growth Falters Badly, Clouding Hope for Recovery (by Motoko Rich, New York Times)

The Cost of Austerity (by David Leonhardt, New York Times)