(NPR)
The new February report on employment saw a glimmer of good news,with the economy creating nearly 200,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate dipping to 8.9 percent — below the 9 percent mark for the first time in two years. Pundits cheered, the markets rallied.
But the flip side of the good news was that the employment boom is only within the private sector; private corporations and businesses added 222,000 new jobs in February. Meanwhile, the rise of “austerity” programs in state and local government s across the country led to another month of massive layoffs for public employees; 30,000 government jobs vanished in February.
Steep reductions in state revenues are mostly to blame, a reaction to the recent recession but also to the round of huge tax cuts passed by lawmakers in many states despite budget deficits and the aforementioned revenue drops.
The private sector added 222,000 jobs in February. But states and cities cut 30,000 jobs during the month — including 17,000 in education.
If you go back a few years, you see the opposite pattern: Throughout 2008, as the private sector was cutting jobs, states and cities kept hiring.
But over the past year, as the private sector has slowly started adding jobs, state and local governments have continued to cut month after month.
The time lag between private and public-sector job cuts makes sense if you think about city and state finances.
In 2008, when private companies were cutting jobs, state and city budgets were still based on revenues from before the crisis took hold, so they were still able to hire.
But after the economy collapsed, tax revenues got hammered.
State revenues fell by about 12 percent in 2009, Ben Bernanke noted in a speech this week. At the same time, demand for state services grew, as more people found themselves out of work. State revenues crept back up last year, but only by 3 percent — not nearly enough to make up for the big drop in ’09.
The opposite reactions to the economic “recovery” among the private and public sectors threatens to swamp the fragile rebound. And even as private businesses add low-paying and part-time jobs, the public sector is laying off workers that were earning a living wage and spending their money to boost the national economy.
The loss of government jobs and reduced incomes will only become more of a serious drag on the economy as Republican governors and state legislatures continue an aggressive war on public employees with mass layoffs and proposals to allow even more pay reductions and ability to fire more state employees through the end of collective bargaining for public workers.
Also a factor will be the dramatic loss or reduction in government services as state and local governments seek more cost savings through layoffs. Reduced access to vital government services will be another hindrance to a national economic recovery.
A quarter of a million private sector jobs just this month. Keep that pace up and you’ve got 3 million private sector jobs a year.
These Republican Governors, no matter how hard they try, can’t fire public teachers and firefighters fast enough to overcome Obama’s pro-business, pro-jobs economy his team laid the framework for.
Private sector job gains equaled 222,000–public sector losses = 30,000–if the second number was zero, whaddya got? a stronger economy. Republican obsession with austerity is killing the recovery and killing jobs…