Okay, I will admit that I am obsessed with this one particular truth: The stimulus bill and all the stops that the federal government pulled to save the economy and create jobs didn’t not help the private sector employees. On the other hand, it did show support for its own employees.
Encouraged by Reason Magazine’s founder Manny Klausner, I made this chart this morning based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data that shows the change in employment in the private and the public sectors during the last two years.
Warning: the number of public employees is on the right hand-side of the chart and the private employees are on the left.
Warning 2: This chart is not claiming that public employment was ever higher than private employment.
However, it is showing without a doubt that during the last two year the number of public employees has increased from 22.3 million in January 2008 to 22.4 million in January 2010, after peaking at 22.6 million in July 2009. Not that impressive you will say. Well, excuse me but it certainly beats being a private employee during that same period of time. The number of private jobs decreased from 115.5 million in January 2008 to 107 million. That’s a lose of 8.7 million jobs in the private sector while the public sector gained almost 100,000 jobs.
The data doesn’t lie my friend. Now, let’s me ask this question again: who are the big losers in this recession and who has ultimately benefited from the big government intervention in our economy?