Nice Try Krugman: Federal Workforce Is Bigger Even After All Those Census Workers Were Let Go

The chart below (found also here), from Big Government contributor Veronique de Rugy clearly shows that federal employment has grown by 98,000 jobs since the start of the recession. This bears repeating, because lefty columnist Paul Krugman is furiously spinning that the increase in employment is due to Census hiring. Krugman:

But anyone paying attention knew why public employment had risen — and it had nothing to do with Big Government. It was, instead, the fact that the federal government had to hire a lot of temporary workers to carry out the 2010 Census — workers who have almost all left the payroll now that the Census is done.

Um, no.

These numbers from economist de Rugy, looking at the job market since the start of the recession, are also revealing:

Private sector: -7.2 million jobs (6 percent of the January 2008 workforce)

Total government: -118,000 jobs (0.5 percent of its January 2008 workforce)

Federal government: +98,000 jobs (a 3.5 percent growth since January 2008)

State government: +42,000 jobs (less than 1 percent growth since January 2008)

Local government: -258,000 jobs (1.7 percent of its January 2008 workforce)

So, even after all those Census workers were let go, the federal government workforce GREW by 3.5% since the start of the recession. And while the overall government workforce shrank by 0.5% (a reduction totally attributable to local government cuts), the private workforce has shrunk by a breathtaking 6%.

Of course, it isn’t only Krugman pushing the Census hiring as some kind of smoke-screen to obscure the federal hiring binge. The ‘nonpartisan’ PolitiFact, i.e. nonpartisan because they only attack Republicans, used this ruse in a recent attack on Gov. Pawlenty. (In fairness to PolitiFact, it does seem that Pawlenty’s people misread some of de Rugy’s data for an op-ed in the WSJ.) Which, of course, was then dutifully picked up by the AP. You catching how this all works?

Bonus: If it looks like the spike in this year’s Census hiring is bigger than the previous two counts, you’re correct. This year, the federal government hired about 34,000 more Census workers than in the past.